Alive Again
by Dorkoftheyear
Summary: As her hand pulled away, the back of Alice's index finger softly brushed against Claire's jaw for a fraction of a second; barely noticeable.Claire shuddered, and then confusing want turned to anger at the rudeness of the other woman" Set in 3rd movie
1. Chapter 1

They had kicked her out. In the harsh light of day she had seen their true faces and where their loyalties lay; apparently with the new girl, the new leader. The one who suddenly knew what was best for the small group of survivors. After the many months of protecting and encouraging hope in the convoy, it hurt to be thrown out of what she had thought was a tightly knit faction. To be shunned from her own vehicle, the SUV she had contributed as the first piece of the convoy, just the thought angered her and fueled her need for the object which had been the cause of her banishment.

Claire Redfield struggled to rein in her irritation as she inhaled deeply the sweet thick fumes of the cigarette she gripped with only her lips. Her hands were too busy being threaded through her own strawberry hair. Acute hair loss due to stress was a new growing worry to Claire ever since _she_ came in the picture. Alice.

Alice had suggested that they stop the convoy on the side of the road when Claire had lit up one of her delicious cancerous friends in the SUV. _Alice_ thought it was a bad idea to expose those who didn't smoke to the toxic fumes, saying that their chances of survival were already short enough, and Claire's filthy habit didn't need to add to that ever-increasing chance of death. The side glances thrown by Alice at the teenager, Kmart, were enough to convince Carlos that she was right.

And so here Claire was, sitting on the side of the road in the hot Nevada daylight, condemned to feel guilt over making the convoy stop so she could have her nicotine fix. _Ridiculous,_ she thought, shaking her head to herself.

She heard a car door open and, as a force of habit and muscle memory reaction, her hand flew to her Glock tucked safely yet conveniently loose into a holster at her side. Claire had to struggle not to pull the gun out and aim as she saw Alice walking towards her from the car.

"You smoke slow."

Claire gritted her teeth, took another long drag off the cigarette, and removed it from her mouth. "I like to make them last. Who knows when there won't be any more of them?"

"Hmm. I guess that's true."

Alice was next to the redhead now, who refused to look at the newcomer. As a result, Claire's peripheral vision picked up only Alice's long legs and thighs, covered at the top by faded black fabric and bare halfway above the knees. Something about the sight made Claire uneasy. She turned her head a bit to the left and inhaled smoke once more.

"So were your parents the kind that didn't teach you how to share?" The blonde asked, a half smirk playing on her hardened features. Claire started, looking the other in the face with and astonished expression.

"Excuse the fuck out of me?" She asked with a snarl, replacing the cigarette in its rightful place between her lips again.

Alice's smirk grew into a full blown grin as she reached over purposefully and with two delicate fingers plucked the dangling cigarette from Claire's mouth to wrap her own lips around it. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the rich taste of the red label smoke.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Claire exclaimed with an exasperated face. "You were the one who went on that whole spiel about how smoking was bad for our remaining youth and how I should go outside of the car to do it."

Alice drained a bit more of the chemicals from the stick and then pulled it out of her mouth, expelling smoke from her nose like some sort of cigarette stealing dragon. Her grin remained as she said "Like you said, who knows when there won't be any more of them," and then carefully reached over and placed the almost finished butt back between the redhead's slightly parted lips.

As her hand pulled away, the back of Alice's index finger softly brushed against Claire's jaw for a fraction of a second; barely noticeable.

Claire shuddered, and then confusing want turned to anger at the rudeness of the other woman, who was striding back towards the SUV. Claire jumped up, stomping out the last bit of cigarette beneath her boot, and jogged over to Alice as she was halfway to the car.

"Hey!" She grabbed the blonde's shoulder and spun her around to face the simmering glare of Claire's own face. "Why the hell can't you act like a normal civilized person? If you have a problem with me, just tell me to my face. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's-"

"Passive aggressive games?" Alice finished for her. Claire blinked, and Alice took the moment of silence to step a foot closer to the redhead. "I don't have any problem with you, Claire." The smirk had returned. Claire wished she had something to cover it up with.

"Then please, explain why the hell it is you've chosen to annoy only me? Oh, everyone loves the new girl! She can create fiery skies from nothing and is impossible to even scrape in a fight. Well I'm on to you, new girl. There's something way off about you and I'm going to find out what it is. It's my job to keep these people safe, and I will stop at nothing to do it." Claire hadn't realized she had stepped forward as well, leaving only a few inches between the two of them.

Alice's face was unreadable now, all signs of the smirk gone, replaced by a stern yet wistful expression Claire couldn't figure out. Alice's stare burned into Claire's own eyes, making her shiver once more. The blonde leaned forward slowly, closing the space between them. Claire was frozen, except for her eyes, which she shut now that they were freed from the intense stare of those light ocean blue orbs.

Alice's lips stopped barely a centimeter from Claire's own, and then the blonde smoothly moved her mouth around to the side of Claire, stopping at her ear, and whispered with force "All I want is to keep these people safe; including you. Don't forget that."

The warm breath on her ear made a strange jolt of electric current shoot through Claire's body quickly, immobilizing her further. She searched her brain for something to reply with, but came up blank. Opening her eyes, she saw Alice's right boot disappearing into the front passenger seat of the SUV, and heard the door shut loudly in the quiet desert.

Suddenly feeling stripped and exposed, Claire hurried to the car, climbing into the back seat next to Kmart, who had stuck a pair of headphones in and was pushing buttons on an old Sony walkman. The teenager glanced up at Claire and offered her an ear bud. Claire shook her head and turned her attention to the window, replaying what had just happened over in her head until the sun retreated over the hills and with it, her will to stay awake.

* * *

As Claire dreamed, she was back outside the SUV, standing halfway between the car and the road, as she was earlier when the confrontation happened. Alice was there, staring at the smoking cigarette dangling from Claire's mouth.

She walked forward, plucked the cigarette from between the other woman's lips, and tossed it over her shoulder fluidly. She leaned in and touched Claire's shoulder lightly with her gloved hand, fingertips exposed. Her cold fingers felt good on Claire's naked shoulder, and she wished that the blonde would slip her hand under the strap of her brown tank top. She was burning up.

Alice whispered something in Claire's ear, but the blood pounding in her head was too loud, and the sound overpowered Alice's soft yet strong voice. Alice pulled back to stare into green eyes and, like before, leaned in until she was less than inches away from Claire's lips. Claire could feel the heat surging from her own face, and Alice's cold skin repelled it back towards her like a shield. Claire wanted to penetrate that shield, but didn't know how.

Confusion swelled deep within the redhead's brain. Enticing pieces of fantasies or memories of Alice danced behind her eyelids with rapid speed, puzzling reality with imagination. Alice walking towards her outside, Alice standing protectively in front of her with an aimed gun, Alice with that damned smirk on her face, Alice taking a drag from her stolen cigarette.

The pieces became more intense, more personal moments that Claire, in her dream state, couldn't remember if they were real or imagined. Alice whispering in her ear, pulling Claire's shirt up just above the bellybutton, brushing a strand of red hair from her eyes, pulling her closer, wrapping her in her strong arms…

Then suddenly, just one image stuck like a bug in the spider web of Claire's mind. Piercing deep blue eyes. Flecks of green placed delicately around the center. Eyes like that were unforgettable. They stared at Claire, intensely, following her when she tried to move. They made her feel uneasy, yet safe. Protected. Cared for. Maybe even lov-

"Claire." Carlos. Sitting in the driver's seat of the SUV, turned to face Claire in the back seat. "We need to get this perimeter set up before we make camp for the night."

She shook her head to try and clear the images from her dream out of her mind. Those eyes; she could still feel them on her, prying into her. She almost didn't mind.

"Right. Get the others. I'll start scoping out the area." She said mechanically. She opened the door and stepped out into the cold Nevada desert night. Closing the door behind her, she turned, and found herself face to face with the deep blue colored orbs from her dream, staring at her in reality.

"Want some help?" Alice asked. She was perched on one of the dune buggy's the convoy carried to make perimeter set up faster and more efficient.

"Only if I can drive." Claire replied, and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

"I think maybe I should. You don't look fully awake yet, and I don't even know how to get those cameras stuck into the ground and started up properly." The corner of Alice's mouth turned up, threatening the return of the smirk. Damn her.

"Fine," Claire said shortly, and reluctantly climbed onto the buggy behind Alice.

"You might want to hold on. I drive fast." Alice warned her, humor playing in the tone of her voice.

Claire placed her hands delicately on Alice's waist, trying to keep her distance from the other woman on the back seat. She felt Alice chuckle as she revved the engine, and then they were flying through the desert, sand kicking up in two tracks on either side of the vehicle. Claire was propelled forward with the force of the buggy's rough start, and slammed into Alice's backside. She immediately flung her arms all the way around the blonde's midsection to keep from falling off.

The wind had pried both of their clothing a few inches up from their stomachs, and Claire gasped at the feeling of her bare stomach on Alice's back. She quickly regained control of herself and let go of Alice with one arm, pulling her shirt back down and tucking it inside her pants to keep it down. She decided to replace her arm around the other woman, reassuring herself it was for safety reasons rather than indulging some sick fantasy she may or may not have had in a dream.

_This being in the hot sun all day is really starting to mess with my head,_ she thought to herself, as she reached around to grab the first camera to shove into the cool sand of the desert. She would secure this perimeter, grab some quick dinner, take first watch, then go to sleep, ALONE, hopefully having a dreamless slumber and no attacks from the infected.

Although, as she thought about it, Claire decided that maybe another dream like the last wouldn't be such a bad thing.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Claire woke to the sound of buzzing static outside the SUV she shared with Carlos and Kmart. Confused as to why she could only see through half of her vision, she begun to panic, then realized her hat was covering the top half of her eyes.

Pulling the baseball cap back off her brow, she looked around the car. Everyone else was still asleep, and it was still dark outside. She checked her watch, which by some miracle was still working. Three in the a.m.

Glancing out the window of the car, Claire found the source of the static sound. Alice was sitting by a small campfire in the sand, listening intently to a radio she held in her hand.

Claire opened the door quietly and stepped out, surveying the area with her hand on the glock and holster. When she was satisfied that there was no threat (well, of the infected at least), she walked over to the fire and sat down next to Alice.

"Someone's been sending out a transmission for the past hour or so. They're not too far from here, maybe five or six miles."

Claire studied the blonde's face; she had that intense look of concentration again, like she was mulling something over in her mind.

"You want to go see if there's anyone actually alive there."

Alice nodded once, slowly, turning to look Claire dead in the eyes. "The transmission says they need food, water, and a way out of the building they're trapped in. I can help them." Claire realized Alice was looking at her with an expression of pleading, as if she were asking permission for something.

"You think there's a chance you won't be coming back."

Alice remained silent, just holding her eye lock with Claire's. Claire stared into those mesmerizing green flecked eyes from her dream again. She made a decision.

"Well, let's get going then."

Alice barked out a laugh. "You can't go."

"Why the hell not?" Claire felt the anger from the previous day returning. What was with this girl?

"These are your people here, Claire. You can't leave them. What if something happened to you?"

"Nothing's going to happen to me. I'm a good shot and I have yet to even be touched by one of the infected. I'm going." She stood up and stubbornly crossed her arms, looking very much like a child.

"I don't think-"

"I don't care what you think. Carlos is here; he can look after things while I'm gone. If there are people in trouble somewhere, I want to help. Even you can admit that I'm good in a fight."

Alice sighed. "Fine. Put out this fire; I'll go get the bike."

She was gone before Claire could object to taking the motorcycle. The redhead had kept it in the back of one of the vans after more vehicles had been added to the convoy. It was more practical to ride in cars, but the bike had been Claire's pride and joy since her father had left it to her when he died. She had ridden it into raccoon city for the first time from her college dorm that night. The night when her worries about her brother Chris had become too overwhelming, and she needed to go check on him. But Chris was nowhere in raccoon city…

The roar of the Harley's engine brought Claire out of her reverie, and she quickly stomped out the fire in front of her, kicking sand into the pit as Alice pulled up next to her.

"I don't suppose I'd get to drive this one, either?" Claire shouted over the growling bike.

Alice smirked. "Not a chance."

Claire sighed to herself and reluctantly climbed onto the back of the motorcycle, once more wrapping her arms around Alice. She sat closer this time, their shoulders pressed together enough to send electric shocks through Claire again.

As they pulled onto the small strip of highway, Claire watched Alice's hand play against the throttle on the handle bar, her lean arm muscles glowing in the moonlight. The wind whipped around the two of them, allowing Claire to inhale the smell of short blonde hair that somehow, although dirty from months of roaming of fighting, smelled delicious and intoxicating.

Claire wondered how it would feel to rest her chin on the driver's shoulder, just for a moment. She shook her head vigorously to get rid of the thought, but as Alice slowed the motorcycle down to turn onto a dim city street, the bike hit a bump and Claire's face flew involuntarily forward to sit steadily on Alice's shoulder.

Surprised by the contact, Alice whipped her head around to look at Claire, accidentally bumping their heads together.

"Are you okay?" The blonde shouted, gently cupping Claire's head in her hand and threading her fingers through the silky strawberry hair.

Claire swallowed hard, trying to fight the exhilarating tingles that were coursing through her body at Alice's touch. Her skin felt like mexican jumping beans and her head was filled with fog. She swallowed again.

"K-keep your eyes on the road," She managed to croak. Alice's hand swiftly disappeared from her skin and returned to the handle bar. Claire had to suppress a whimper of regret at the loss of contact.

This is stupid, she thought to herself. Grow up, Claire. Focus on what you came here to do.

Alice pulled the bike to a slow stop in front of a small convenient store, Jerry's Goods. She killed the engine and leaned the Harley down gently on its kick stand.

Swinging one leg over the bike, Alice held out her hand to help Claire off. Claire scoffed at the other girl and dismounted fluidly. Alice raised an eyebrow at the her and grinned.

The grin disappeared as her gaze zeroed in behind Claire's head. Claire turned around to see what the problem was, and froze.

Across the street from the convenient store was a two storey house, the bottom half converted into a business. A sign hanging on the front door read "Connely's Animal Hospital," and below that, a black and orange CLOSED sign hung in the door's window. Through one of the upstairs window, Claire could make out the light flicker of candles.

"There's someone in there," She said to Alice. Alice had reverted into warrior mode, though, her head down and eyes glaring forward towards the lawn of the animal hospital. Her hands were already reaching for the two kukri blades she kept strapped to her sides.

Reaching for her glock, Claire looked again at the sight in front of the building that had made her freeze. At least 30 of the infected had swarmed around the base of the building like bugs; clawing and kicking at the windows, moaning awful wet sounds to draw out victims trapped within the house.

Claire fought her gag reflex as she did every time she saw a group of those things. It was worst when the smell hit. Rotten flesh and disease drifted toward her nose, coupled with the sight of skin fragments peeling and melting from the once living, walking on shattered bones and chewing on limbs they carried from their last victims or had simply pulled off another dead being around them.

A soft warmth covered Claire's shoulder, bringing her back to the present. Alice's hand again. That thing was getting awfully friendly lately.

"You ready?" The blonde asked, her face sternly set and determined. Claire nodded in response, checking to make sure her gun was fully loaded. "Don't be afraid to fall back if it's too much for you to handle."

"I know what I'm doing," Claire shot back, annoyed. She shrugged the other's hand from her shoulder.

"Then let's get to work."

They moved together, purposefully, towards the hoard of infected gathered around the house. Alice called out a short "hey!" to draw a small group of them away. About five or six of the dead stalked towards the two women. Alice rushed forward, swinging her curved kukri knives as if they were light as string, and within seconds, the group of zombies lay dismembered and lifeless at her feet in a circle.

Claire stood back, aiming carefully with the glock, and pulled the trigger several times. The gun spit four bullets out, one after the other, directly into the skulls of four still moving undead. She waited a few seconds, gun still pointed at them, until they dropped to the ground; one, two, three, four.

Rinse and repeat, she thought, and took aim again.

Meanwhile, Alice had worked her way into the center of the crowd, hacking away with the knives while expertly keeping her distance from the oozing, contagious beings. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Claire jogging forward, having already taken out as many targets as she could from her far range.

She heard the poppoppoppop of Claire's glock, and saw the crowd around her thin a bit more as four more infected fell lifeless once again, puddles of fluid oozing from their wounds to outline the bodies. Soon enough, Claire had worked her way into the middle next to Alice. They stood together, backs pressing against one another, as Alice jabbed out with a knife every few seconds while Claire reloaded her gun.

Eventually, there were only a few of the infected left.

This won't take too long, Claire thought, reaching into her pocket for more bullets. She felt Alice move away from her to attack, and as the redhead dropped the casings into the gun, she heard a guttural moan in her right ear.

She spun around quickly to point her gun in the face of the attacker, but her foot caught between the legs of a fallen infected on the ground, and she tumbled downwards. The moaning attacker moved towards her, stood over her, and reached down.

Then suddenly, a thin red line appeared in the middle of its neck, and it stopped, becoming a peeling, rotten statue over Claire. Then slowly, the red line grew, and the head slid smoothly from the neck, landing on the ground with a sickeningly wet thud. The body followed a second later, revealing Alice standing where the zombie was, wiping the bloody knives off with the bottom of her shoe.

"How you doing, Redfield?" She asked, inspecting the kukri blades thoroughly before sheathing them.

"Shut the fuck up," Claire snapped, pushing herself up off the ground and away from the mess of dead carcasses that littered the now ruined lawn. "I tripped. It could have happened to anyone."

"Sure, sure." Alice replied, grinning to herself. "Hey, you got some, uh, stuff…" She pointed vaguely to Claire's back, and then reached over to wipe away the dirt. Claire grabbed the other's hand before it reached her ass, and glared at the blonde.

"What?" Alice asked innocently. "Just trying to help." She batted her eyes at Claire.

"Yeah, well, let's focus on helping those people inside first. We came here for a reason, remember?" She talked over her shoulder as she pulled her gun out, taking point as she walked carefully into the dark house.

It was relatively clean inside the animal hospital; the only indicator that no one had been there in months was the layer of dust that covered every surface of the place. On the reception desk was a small basket filled with mints, next to a bin full of pens , a computer with a broken screen, and a small mountain of unfinished paperwork. Claire passed the desk and peeked around a corner, making sure none of the infected had gotten inside.

She heard a tearing sound and then a loud crunch. She turned around to see Alice sneaking through the dark behind her, knife drawn, and a mint shaped imprint on the inside of her cheek. Claire rolled her eyes.

"What?" Alice asked. "I don't know about you, but after breathing in the same air those things were, I could really use a mint."

"Focus, Alice." Claire said through gritted teeth, regretting for the millionth time that she hadn't just stayed with the convoy.

They made their way around the corner and slowly crawled up the stairs, Claire in front with her firearm ready and pointed, and Alice behind, simply peering intently into the darkness before them.

At the top of the stairs was a single door, dim candlelight flickering through the crack underneath. Claire stood to one side of the door in ready position, Alice stood to the other, her hand poised on the brass doorknob. Their eyes met, Claire nodded once shortly, and Alice ripped the door open, bursting through the frame with her Mossberg compact drawn, Claire right behind her with the glock.

Claire quickly took in her surroundings, glancing around the small upper studio room to find candles lit on the drawers and end tables sandwiching a saggy brown couch, a dresser and desk pressed against the wall to the far right, and huddled in the corner next to three large wooden bookcases, a shaking woman with matted dark brown hair and her child, his face covered in smudges of dirt and blood. Both of their clothing was torn to shreds barely covering their skin, and the boy was even lacking shoes.

"Are you okay?" She asked, immediately kneeling beside the pair, leaving Alice to check the rest of the room for remaining threats.

The woman looked up at Claire, frightened beyond belief, and pulled her young boy close to her with two arms.

"It's alright," Claire assured her, returning the glock to its holster. "We're here to help you. I promise."

"A-are they gone?" The woman asked in a quiet, shaky whisper.

"Yes. And we have a safe shelter for you, with food and water and clothing, if you want to come with us. The infected that were surrounding your house are dead now; or dead again."

"Do you have a car?" Alice asked, not taking her eyes off the lawn from the window.

"Yes, around the back, with plenty of gas, too. We just couldn't get to it. They were everywhere and so many of them…" The woman's eyes glistened with brimming tears.

"Well you're safe now, I promise," Claire said in her reassuring voice. "What's your name?"

"Jenny. And this is Zack."

"Hi Jenny, and Zack. I'm Claire and that's Alice. We can take you back to the rest of the survivors now, if you want."

"We have no place else to go," The woman, Jenny, moaned. "Everyone I knew is gone, there haven't been any people passing through here, so I sent the transmission hoping someone would hear it and help."

"Well we heard it, and we'll help you." Claire smiled at the woman and her son.

"We have to go, now." Alice said from the window.

"Alright. Are you ready?" Claire asked; standing and offering a hand to Jenny. The woman took it and put an arm around her son.

Alice led the way downstairs this time, followed by Jenny and Zack, and then Claire. They saw the family safely to their Jeep around the back of the house, guns drawn, and told them to follow around to where Claire's Harley was still parked, untouched.

Claire jumped on the front of the bike before Alice could object this time, and started the engine quickly. The blonde swung one long leg over the back seat and wrapped a strong arm around Claire's waist, making the driver lean back into her for a second.

A low guttural sound made Claire start, and as her head flew to the left she saw one of the infected limping from behind a building towards the sound of the roaring motorcycle.

"Drive!" Alice commanded with a steady voice, talking directly into Claire's ear. She pulled the Mossberg out from its holster across her back and shot the dead man directly in the center of his forehead in one quick motion. He dropped with a wet thump as Claire sped the bike away from the small city, leaving behind the stench of death, decay, and fear.

As Claire kept the bike at a steady pace, glancing in the mirrors to make sure the Jeep was still behind them, Alice holstered the compact firearm once more and placed her other hand gently yet securely on the redhead's waist. Claire's eyelids fluttered at the touch and she shook her head to regain control of her brain.

"Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" Alice asked, talking into the other's ear again to be heard over the sound of the engine.

"Yeah, it went swimmingly," Claire replied dryly, flashing back to the infected standing over her as she lay on the ground, helpless. She remembered the light blue eyes staring down at her moments later. There was safety in those eyes.

"Hey, thanks," She said, somewhat reluctant to admit that she had actually needed help. "You know, for back there. I would have… well, thanks."

The grin could be heard in Alice's reply "No problem. I hope one day you'll do the same for me."

"I guess that means you'll be sticking around for a while, then." Claire said. Half of her was disappointed, hoping to get rid of the irksome confusion that seemed to fog her mind whenever Alice was around. The other half of her was delighted, causing her to fail at suppressing a faint smile at the thought of fighting alongside Alice again, even just seeing her face on a daily basis.

"Yeah, I guess so."

The sun was just beginning to rise as they pulled up to the camp, painting shades of orange and pinkish-red across the flat desert landscape. Claire could see Carlos and LJ beginning the morning preparations, and Kmart stood next to the SUV, carefully applying her eyeliner in the side mirror.

Claire parked the bike behind the van she kept it stored it, and went to see Carlos for a report of anything that had happened while they were gone. As the rest of the convoy began to awake, Alice brought Jenny and Zack over to introduce them to the other survivors.

Claire walked over to stand next to Alice, who was watching the new pair talk with a girl named Betty. The redhead lit up a cigarette and let it dangle from her lips.

"Want one?" She asked Alice, holding her pack of reds out as an offering. Maybe this girl wasn't so bad after all.

"Sure," Alice replied with a smile, and reached over to take the lit stick from Claire's mouth once again.


	3. Chapter 3

Thanks to everyone who commented! I've never had so many comments for one story before. But I guess that's expected when it's Alice and Claire. Anyways, feedback is greatly appreciated for all chapters as well as criticisms. Just a note for this chapter, the back story for Claire is based on the books/games rather than the movies, partially because they didn't really explain anything in the movie. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 3

The cold night air blew at Claire in a fountain of ice and sand as she sat by the dying fire. The crackling flames of orange and red light did little to warm her chilled skin in the late hour as she kept watch over the rest of the sleeping survivors. Unable to sleep soundly, she had volunteered to switch watch shifts with Carlos earlier in the evening as everyone else readied themselves for bed.

It had been a fairly uneventful day, which she supposed was a good thing. After bringing the two new rescues back to camp, she had gone to check on Kmart, who had somehow picked up a cold, then spent the rest of the day wandering around taking stock of what was left of the supplies and gas in the vehicles. Then she had done a quick scouting of the perimeter with Mikey right before dinner, which turned out to be a can of raw green beans. Delicious. Apparently to Claire, an off day had become one where she wasn't chased by human devouring zombie hordes at least once before dinner.

_You know why you were hoping for another fight,_ Claire told herself. She shook her head.

"Shut up. I was not."

_Yes you were. So you could be next to her again._

"No, not true at all. If that's what I really wanted, I could just walk up next to her at any time. Not that I would. She's completely childish and irritating." Claire pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them, trying to keep more of the cold wind off her bare skin.

_Of course you wouldn't. You're too afraid._

Claire rolled her eyes. "Afraid of what, that she'll randomly decide to fill the sky with fire again using only the power of her mind? Because on every other level, I think I could take her."

_Right. You're not afraid of the way she makes you feel or anything._

"Feel what, angry?"

_That's definitely not the reason you couldn't sleep earlier. There's no way you're trying to avoid another dream like the last one._ Claire's subconscious voice had taken on a sarcastic tone and she didn't like it.

"Shut up. I'm done arguing with you." She paused. "I can't believe I just had a conversation with myself out loud. I must be tired."

"Do you talk to yourself often, or is this a new thing for you?"

Alice had walked up behind her, stealthy as ever, and now sat across the small fire from Claire.

_Wonderful,_ she thought.

"Actually, yes," She responded to Alice. "I often talk to myself while I'm on watch. I like it better than talking to _some_ people around here."

_Take that, miss passive aggressive._

Alice grinned, the dancing flames illuminating her shadowed face in oddly beautiful ways. "Yeah, me too."

The brief conversation dead ended, and they sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. Claire took the silence as an opportunity to steal quick sidelong glances at the person across the fire, whose blank face showed no emotion. Sheathed in shadow save for the licks of flame that highlighted her face, only Alice's green flecked eyes were visible to Claire, seeming to glow in the darkness like the stealthy stare of a wild animal.

It took Claire a moment to realize she and Alice had been staring each other in the eyes for a full minute or more, and she blinked, breaking the contact.

Finally, the silence was too overwhelmingly irritating, and she asked "Did you come out here for any specific reason, or do you just like to stare at people silently in the dark every now and then?"

"Well, some things are worth staring at." Came the reply.

"What?"

"You've been holding out on me." It was easy to hear the slight upwards curl of the corner of the blonde's mouth.

"I- _what?_?" Claire asked, baffled.

Alice reached into her knee length coat and pulled out a bottle. The bottle of Captain Morgan Claire kept under the back passenger seat of the SUV.

"I was looking for a flashlight," Alice responded to the rage in Claire's eyes.

"Do you even need to use a flashlight? You don't just have perfect night vision or the ability to use sonar waves or something?"

Alice laughed. "My freaky super powers only go so far."

"Hah, right. So you admit you're freaky?" Claire felt her mood start to lighten, and was surprised at her ability to joke with the woman she usually found so irritating.

"Yeah, I guess so. So are we going to drink this or what?" Alice asked, holding the bottle up in the air and shaking it at Claire, who looked at the sloshing golden-brown liquid for a moment before shaking her head and laughing.

"Yeah, alright." She sighed, giving in to Alice's knowing gaze. "I guess we should celebrate bringing those people back alive."

"I thought you might say that." Alice said, moving over to the other side of the burning logs and sitting down next to Claire. She held the bottle out to the other woman with one gloved hand and raised an eyebrow. Claire took the rum and uncapped it. Pressing the open bottle to her lips, she tilted her head back and poured a shot into her mouth, swallowing hard.

The burning liquid sliding down her throat lessened the bite of the chilly night air. She took another quick sip. Alice let out a low chuckle.

"So where did you find that anyway?" The blonde asked. "I thought liquor stores were one of the first places the looters hit when the infection started spreading."

Claire handed the bottle over to Alice, who took a sip, savoring the blazing sensation in her mouth before swallowing it and handing the bottle back.

"Oh, they were, but taking point when searching out buildings has its perks; like being able to find…indulgences like these before anyone else does."

"And I'm guessing that's how you get your cigarettes, too?" Alice lifted a questioning eyebrow.

"Shhhh," Claire said, raising a cigarette to her lips in place of a finger. She brought her lighter up and, cupping a delicate hand around the stick to protect it from the wind, held the flame underneath until the tip turned to ash. "I don't want all my secrets getting out."

"Hmm, secrets, huh?" Alice mused. "And what secrets could Claire Redfield possibly have to hide?"

Claire smiled slightly. "I guess you'll just have to stick around to find out." She hid the rest of her growing smile behind the bottle as she took a long shot from it, the sweet liquid blazing on her lips for a few seconds after she swallowed.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Alice said, her rough voice low in the quiet night.

The sound of a closing car door caught Claire's attention. She turned around to see Carlos emerging from one of the vehicles, ready for his watch shift.

"Do you want to take a walk?" She asked quickly, not willing to give up their privacy just yet. She saw Alice's eyes flicker over to Carlos, who was walking towards them already, then back to Claire.

"Sure. Got that flashlight?"

Claire grabbed the device that was sitting next to her and waved it in the air. She stood up and looked over to Carlos, pressing two fingers to her temple and saluting him, letting him know that they'd be back soon. He nodded, gesturing back to her.

She and Alice walked side by side away from the small camp, the warmth of the fire slowly diminishing behind them with each step. They walked in silence for a few minutes, following the yellow beam from the flashlight bobbing up and down in the sand.

"So do you mind sharing some of those secrets you hide so well?" Alice asked. Claire snickered in response.

"What do you want to know?"

"How did you come to be in Nevada? The convoy- how did you start that?" The pure curiosity in her voice persuaded Claire to answer.

"My brother. He was on a police force in Raccoon city called the STARS; special tactics and rescue squad. When the cannibal murders started in the city, they were sent in to investigate. Come to find out the "murders" were actually caused by the first group of infected outside an Umbrella laboratory where the virus leaked out.

I was away at college when I heard news reports about the murders, and I called Chris, but I couldn't reach him. I called his friends from work and people I knew in the city too, but no one would answer. By that time the infection had spread into the main city. I had gotten worried not being able to get in contact with him.

He's the only family I have left since my parents died, and he always answers his phone. So I drove to Raccoon to find him. By then the city was decimated. The infected were walking everywhere and there was no sign of Chris.

I went to the police station there to look for any clues as to where he might be. I found his journal. It said that the STARS had gone into hiding, that Police Chief Irons and Umbrella had tried to blame the cannibal murders on them somehow, that they'd uncovered some kind of conspiracy, and it wasn't safe. The rest of his entries led me here, where I met Carlos. We slowly started picking up survivors and working cars. Now we're here."

"Still no sign of your brother?" Alice asked, looking over at Claire. The redhead held the flashlight in the crook of her arm as she lit up another cigarette, then returned it to her hand.

"No. It's like he's dropped off the face of the- shit." The beam from the flashlight flickered and faded to black. Claire smacked it with the palm of her hand, but the light refused to reappear. "Can you see anything?" All Claire could see was the distant flame of the campfire and the lit tip of the Marlboro. The rest was darkness.

"Alice?" Silence.

"Alice."Claire's voice was more panicked this time. She felt around blindly in the dark with her arms outstretched.

"I'm right here," Came the reply from behind her. She turned around quickly, but her hands still connected with nothing but thin air. Claire turned around again, stuffing the useless flashlight into her pocket.

"Where? What's going on?"

"Nothing's wrong, don't worry."

"Then why-"

"Shhh," Alice again, this time to her left.

"Alice, where the hell are you?" She was annoyed now.

She felt a tug on the cigarette between her fingers and it was pulled away from her, the tip brightening as Alice took a drag off it.

"You really have to stop doing that." Claire said, snatching the smoke back from the invisible Alice in front of her. "You realize that you could just-"

"Claire, shut up for a second." The redhead snapped her jaw shut, offended. "I need to try something."

Claire was about to ask another question when she felt warm fingertips slide gently against the flushed skin of her cheek, then thread through her hair. Her brain scrambled for words, but it was as if it was floating 10 feet above her head and there was no way she could reach it.

"Alice, what…" Was all she could formulate, and then hot breath was in her ear.

"Shhh!"

The hand in Claire's hair was slowly pulling her forward, and a small hand was now firmly planted on her waist. Claire gave one last pathetic attempt at speech before soft lips were enveloping hers, the light pressure making her eyes flutter. She stood there stupidly, her arms hanging at her sides, useless.

Then the lips were gone. Claire suddenly felt cold and exposed.

She jumped as a yellow light burst from her pocket. The flashlight; finally revitalized. She tore it from the pocket and aimed it directly in Alice's face. The blonde grimaced and squinted her eyes.

"What the fuck?" Claire cried; a combination of the random kiss and random burst of light.

"What?" Alice asked innocently. "The light's back on." She pointed lazily to the plastic tube in Claire's hand.

"Yeah, I think I realized that when-" Claire stopped mid sentence, the realization hitting her. "You turned the flashlight off. With your freaking mind, you turned the flashlight off with your mind."

Alice smirked. "Nu uh."

"And you kissed me!" Claire pointed an accusing finger at the blonde, her eyes wide and her posture rigid.

"Did not." The smirk grew.

"Yes you did! You kissed me!"

"Okay, I did." Alice admitted with a shrug.

Claire blinked twice, not sure what to do with the admittance. She took a hit off the still lit cigarette.

"Why did you kiss me?"

"Did you not want me to? For the past couple days?" Alice's face was amused and sarcastic somehow, making Claire feel even more stupid.

"Well, I, how could… what?"

Alice stepped forward and grabbed Claire's face with both hands, tilting it up and crushing her lips to the redhead's again, then slowly releasing Claire, she backed up and walked back towards the convoy's camp.

Claire's cigarette had dropped to the ground.

"Stop doing that!" She called out angrily. "Fuck!" She said to herself, and began the walk back to the camp.


	4. Chapter 4

Well, it took a long time and it's a bit shorter, but I think it's worth it. Feedback always appreciated, so let me know what you think!

CHAPTER 4

"Son of a bitch," Claire muttered, taking another sip from the Captain Morgan bottle. She had chased Alice back to the camp, but the blonde had been too fast for her and had already been sitting by the fire talking with Carlos by the time Claire arrived.

Now Claire sat in the SUV, her only company a sleeping Kmart snoring loudly in the back seat. She stared out the front window towards Carlos and Alice, her mind replaying the events of the impromptu walk in muddled pieces. No matter how many times her mind reran them, the thoughts only made her feel even more confused and frustrated.

Scowling to herself, she finally tossed the rum back under the seat and jumped out of the car, unable to sit still any longer. She saw Alice glance up and say something to Carlos. Then the blonde was walking towards Claire, that damn half smirk turning the corner of her mouth up again.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you look awful." Alice said, leaning up against the car next to the redhead.

"'Scuse me?" Claire bit back quickly.

"You look like you could sleep, is all."

Claire rolled her eyes. "I don't need to sleep. I'm fine. Not that I could if I wanted to anyway."

Alice raised a questioning eyebrow. "So Carlos told you?"

"Told me what?" Claire asked suspiciously. She didn't find it likely that Carlos would tell Alice something important before her. But then again, those two did seem to have some kind of history. Claire wondered just how personal that history was. The thought made her somewhat nauseated and she shook it from her head quickly.

"The convoy's almost out of supplies, Claire. There are only a few cans of food left, maybe enough for the next two days. The clothes have been spent, and there's barely enough water left for the rest of the week." Alice's features had softened into a sympathetic image, and her voice lacked the usual sarcastic and jesting tone it was usually full of.

Claire took in a long breath and let it out slowly. "We'll have to go on a scavenging trip. There should be some sort of small town or at least a gas station nearby. Hopefully the raiders haven't pilfered all the food in the area."

"When you say 'we,' you mean…"

"Well I'd be pretty stupid to try to go anywhere without you these days, huh?" Claire rolled her eyes, and despite the heavy situation she felt pressing down on her, she let a smile play across her face. "Is that what you were getting at?"

"Yup," Alice said, returning the smile full force. "I'm glad you've finally learned your place here."

"Hey, you watch yourself. One of these days your ass is gonna need saving and I'm going to be the only one around."

"And because you like me so much, I know you'll do the right thing." Alice replied with mock seriousness.

"Let fate put you out of your misery?" This time it was Claire who wore the smirk.

Alice narrowed her eyes, but her smile remained. "Yeah, you're real cute. Just you wait."

Claire's stomach fluttered, her twisted brain taking Alice's response out of context and warping it to fit her liking.

_Or did she mean it…_

"So when does this scavenging adventure begin?" The blonde asked.

"Pretty much now. Grab whatever you need and meet me by the van. No more than five minutes."

And with that, Claire hurried off to find Carlos. She found him where he had been when she left the SUV, sitting by the fire.

"Carlos." His head turned towards her, and by his somber expression Claire could tell that he had overheard her conversation with Alice. "I need you to take care of things while I'm gone."

"And where exactly are you going?" He asked with knowing suspicion.

Claire sighed. "I'm not sure exactly. There has to be something around here, though, right? I mean, at least a gas station. At the very least maybe we'll be able to find some water. There has to be something."

Carlos blinked slowly and nodded. "Who are you trying to convince, Claire?"

She shook her head. "I know, I know. It's a long shot, but we have to try something. I can't leave these people stranded without the basic things I promised them. We'll be back soon." She turned to leave.

"Claire!" Carlos called after her. She faced him, waiting. "Be careful with her."

She nodded, and then she was off, walking quickly towards the empty supply van where Alice already stood, of course. Carlos's words rang in her ears as her eyes met light blue orbs.

"Let's go," Claire said quickly, urgent authority forcing its way into her voice. She reached for the driver's side door handle, and suddenly found herself held against the side of the van, Alice's strong arms pressing against the redhead.

Claire blinked in surprise, her head clouding from the warm force of Alice's body against hers.

"What are you doing?" She asked, a shy smile somehow spreading across her face. Alice gripped the other's wrist and lightly squeezed until the keys to the van dropped into her gloved hand.

"I'm driving," She said with a grin and a wink, and then the pressure holding Claire still was gone; the van's engine rumbled to life seconds after the cold wind hit Claire's now unsheltered body. She sighed to herself, then quickly jogged around to the passenger's side and, shaking her head with a smile, climbed in.

With the van facing the empty road ahead, Alice turned her head towards Claire, one hand on the steering wheel, and asked "Left or right, Redfield?"

Claire was silent for a long moment.

"Left."

The van jolted forward in rocky movements until the tires slid onto the smooth gravel of the dark road ahead. Claire's stomach somersaulted endlessly as they drove onwards, a combination of the risk she was taking not knowing where they were going, and the fact that the van's cab had only one long seat in it; one long seat that seemed to pull Claire closer towards the driver every time they turned or hit a bump.

Claire watched Alice closely out of the corner of her eye as they sped down the deserted highway. The blonde wore an expression of fierce concentration, her gaze fixed on the road, her eyebrows knit together as though she were contemplating something vital. Her chest rose and fell in a calm yet prominent pattern, much more controlled than Claire's own rapid breathing.

She was suddenly aware that the van's seat had once again pulled her closer to the driver, their legs barely inches away. Claire didn't move.

She saw Alice glance over at her, and then do a double take when she realized how close they were. Claire started, and moved her arms to push herself up and away from the other woman, then stopped. She took a deep breath, realizing she _liked_ being close to Alice.

_Okay, what the hell had gotten into you, Redfield, s_he asked herself. _What are you now, ga-_

"Look," Alice said softly, slowing the van down considerably as she pulled over to the side of the road.

"I don't see anything…" Claire responded. She peered into the looming darkness ahead, squinting. Nothing but sand. Nothing but darkness, sand, and-

"A building!" She exclaimed, her eyes widening as they focused in on the large dark rectangle barely visible in the distance. "I knew it. I knew we'd find something."

"And that's why they call you the leader," Alice said, winking.

Claire had a few seconds to flash a smile at the blonde before her sense of reality kicked back in.

"Yeah, well let's not get our hopes up just yet. It could be completely drained of supplies by now, or swarming with infected."

Alice rolled her eyes. "You don't know that. Let's go have a look, Debbie Downer."

Claire smacked Alice on the arm with an open mouthed grin as the blonde smirked back and slowly brought the van closer to the seemingly empty building. She killed the engine about thirty feet away from the GAS HERE sign, and the night went completely black as the headlight died.

Claire heard the spinning wheel of a lighter and a small flame flickered to life in front of the driver, who now sat with a lit cigarette in her mouth. A Marlboro red.

"Is that mine?" Claire asked, annoyance ringing in her voice.

Alice took in a long drag then held the cigarette out to her. The zippo lighter still held its flame, illuminating the blonde's quirky expression in the pitch black van.

"Want it back?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.

Claire just scowled in response, so Alice raised the smoke back to her mouth. Claire reached out quickly and snatched the cigarette from the other's lips, raising it to her own with a smirk.

"You're going to have to get your own moves," Alice said with a laugh.

"Oh, I have my own. Just thought I should give you a taste of your own medicine for once." Claire said, her voice almost a whisper.

"Oh yeah? When do I get to see these moves then?" Alice asked in a flirty voice that made Claire's heart skip faster. She inhaled sharply.

"Let's focus on what we came here to do, first." She pulled out her flashlight and flipped the on switch. "And no fucking with my flashlight this time."

Alice grinned back, snapping her wrist in the air so that the cover of the lighter extinguished the flame. "If you say so."

Claire's memory flashed back to their walk in the desert earlier that night, and she suddenly wished Alice would kill the light again. Not pausing to think about why, Claire slid her thumb along the switch on the flashlight, and the yellow beam suddenly disappeared.

"I didn't do it, I swear!" She head Alice say.

"Alice, shut up." She responded, and reached out with her hand until she felt short blonde locks of hair beneath her fingers. Pulling Alice's head towards her own, Claire closed the distance between them on the seat of the van, and breathing hard, pressed her lips against Alice's.

They were softer than Claire remembered, but she blamed that on the shock factor that had filled her before. Alice's lips moved over Claire's own, kissing back without the resistance Claire had expected, and strong arms pulled the redhead up until she was straddling the other's lap. Claire moved her arms to push Alice back against the seat of the van, angling her head so that she could envelope more of Alice's lips with her own.

Warm breath on her face took away the chill the night air had brought before, and Claire melted into the kiss further, running her hands through rough blonde hair to pull Alice's face closer. Alice's hands wrapped around Claire, resting on her back then sliding down her sides, hips, lower. Claire's waist moved into the girl beneath her, unable to stop herself, lips still locked firmly with the others'.

It was Alice who finally managed to pull away. Claire could hear her breathing heavily in the dark, her gloved hands still pressed tightly against Claire's back.

"Hypocrite," Alice whispered. Claire laughed, somewhat relieved that Alice hadn't freaked out.

"We should get going," Claire said, suddenly remembering where they were and why they had come.

"Hey, you're the leader."

"Yeah, and don't you forget it," Claire said, pushing Alice back against the seat again and kissing her once more with force. Then she swiftly moved back to her own side of the van, flipped the flashlight back on, and climbed out, leaving Alice in the dark, grinning in amazement.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

"Here's a thought: let's go back to the van!" Claire said, her frightened eyes taking in the overwhelming sight in front of her at the gas station they had found.

After exiting the van, they had approached the tiny building slowly and cautiously, Claire's trusty Glock cocked and readied in her hand. Upon closing in on the station, Claire had stopped short behind a broken down car a few feet from the parking lot, pulling Alice down out of sight with her.

In front of the building, emerging from the busted down door frame, stumbled something unfathomable; a creature that could only have been created by Umbrella. It was hideous beyond all imagination, twice the size of a normal man, and armed with a large hammer. Its bulbous head was bare except for a few tufts of white hair that protruded from the lumpy flesh. One eyeball was placed a few inches higher than the other, almost in the middle of its forehead, and sinewy strings of rotten grey skin hung jiggling from its cheeks like live worms. Its mouth was set in a tight line on the right side, but as it turned to the left Claire could see the skin was not fully formed over the skeletal grinning teeth on the opposite side, shining bright in the dark night like gruesome stars.

The humongous tendons in its pinkish grey legs stretched and pulled with an almost audible strength as the _thing_ stomped its way out of the building, its enormous black boots crunching the ground beneath it. The hammer it held in its rotting hand made a menacing metallic screech as it was dragged along the pavement.

"Seriously, I've seen enough. Time for a good scampering," Claire whispered frantically as she tried to stealthily back away towards the van.

Alice rolled her eyes and grabbed Claire's wrist, pulling her back to the cover of the broken down car.

"Pull it together, Redfield. You'll be fine, you've got me here, remember?" She flashed a cocky smile, then like lightening was gone, propelling herself forward on one leg up and over the car until she was standing to the left of the giant monstrosity.

Claire's breath caught in her throat and a spasm of fear ricocheted through her. Alice was going to die. She was ruthless and arrogant and impractical and she was going to die right here trying to show off.

_Please, please, please don't do anything stupid,_ Claire begged, wishing the blonde would sneak back to the cover they had found, before-

Too late.

Alice had unsheathed her two kukri blades, the smooth sliding sound of metal against leather echoing off the walls, and was now speeding towards the giant man. Hearing the sound of her boots on the ground, the thing began to turn towards its attacker. As it did, Alice leaped, soaring a good six feet in the air, and the edge of one of the blades bit into the giant's shoulder, leaving a nasty red gash that was seeping blood even before Alice hit the pavement in a crouch.

The thing let out a ferocious growl, more of annoyance than anger, as it looked down at its shoulder, then over at Alice. It slowly raised the bulky hammer and brought its other hand over its head to grip the handle with both meaty fists.

Claire's eyes widened as she watched the monstrous dead thing step forward and start to bring the hammer down.

Then she was on her feet, both hands supporting the Glock as she stepped forward with each round she fired; one, two, three, four, five; and now the thing was angling itself towards her, taken aback by the shots that had hit its tree trunk of a leg, but not hurt in the slightest.

Claire gulped, wishing she had brought a bigger gun, something with more firepower, as she reloaded the weapon she currently held.

Alice was already on the move, kicking off of the building and landing on the back of the Umbrella creation, both of her blades digging into the molted flesh beneath her.

The thing screamed, a low yet powerful wail of pain, as the kukri blade followed by Alice's entire fist disappeared inside the wound cut into its back. One enormous hand slapped at the open cut, knocking Alice to the ground, where she lay for a few seconds trying to catch her breath, her open mouth working like a fish out of water.

Claire ran forward, holstering her gun and grabbing a large pointed piece of wood that lay on the ground in a pile of old picket signs and debris. She ducked as the giant swung a fist at her, then raised the wooden stake high above her head, still running, and slammed it down with all her might into the side of the thing's decaying leg. The flesh squished beneath the splintering wood, and Claire squeezed her eyes shut as blood sprayed from the new open site, hitting her in the face.

Claire immediately spit as she felt the wetness hit her, but the splatter of blood had been too quick and had shot into her eyes and mouth from the close range. She frantically wiped at her one closed eye with her hand, blinking away the slight burn from the foreign liquid.

While the monster towering over Claire continued its cry of pain, Alice had risen from the ground and pulled the Mossberg out of its holster strapped to her back. She took aim, holding the gun with one outstretched arm.

"Claire, move!" She called out, and the redhead swiftly jogged out of the way, wiping her mouth off with her arm.

Alice fired one booming shot from the compact firearm that hit the back of the massive thing's head. It turned slowly, a deep growl emanating from its tunnel of a throat. It swatted at Alice, hitting her full on in the head and knocking her off her feet again.

She was back up in a flash, but had dropped her gun and it had skidded between the monster's legs.

It raised the giant hammer once again, and let out a ferocious roar as the hammer fell in a wide arc, narrowly missing Alice's feet as she jumped agilely over it. The weapon slammed into the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the surroundings, causing both Alice and Claire to stumble a bit.

The creature didn't miss a beat as it quickly took the opportunity to heave the hammer up again. This time the mighty bludgeon smashed into Alice's side, and she flew across the parking lot onto the sand.

Claire's jaw clenched in anger and, while the giant's back was still turned, she ran forward and dove between its legs, snatching the abandoned Mossberg up, and scurried backwards in a sort of half crab crawl as the hammer pounded the ground where she was just seconds ago.

Falling onto her back on the pavement, Claire raised the gun and fired two shots; the first missing the target by about a foot, and the second slicing smoothly into the giant's forehead with a thick thud.

It roared in anger, this time actually seeming to feel some pain, and started towards Claire. She gulped, her throat severely dry, and fired again, this time hitting the thing in the jaw, blowing out the one remaining good side of its mouth.

As the giant continued to stalk towards the redhead, who had discarded the now empty compact and was firing repeatedly with the Glock, Alice rose behind it. She ran forward with incredible speed, and jumped sideways into the air, kicking at the back of the creature's left knee.

Claire heard a loud crack and saw the monster's eyes go wide, a howl of fury and pain filling the night air. It shifted its weight to the right leg and began to drag the left one behind it as it continued purposefully to where Claire now stood.

Claire saw Alice back up a bit, then run towards the walking giant once more.

_She's trying to knock it over,_ she thought. _Smart girl. And look at those legs go…_

Claire's train of thought was broken as another earsplitting splinter pierced the night. The monster fell to its knees with a deafening thud, and she scrambled out of the way to avoid being crushed by the falling gargantuan.

But the massive fiend wasn't done. It perched on its broken knees and swung the hammer at Claire, who dodged out of the way just in time. Looking up, she saw Alice once again behind the giant thing, her blue eyes narrowed in determination and a look on her face saying 'I got this.'

She unsheathed the kukri knives and sprinted for the creature, her mouth set in a tight line. She reached down, crossing the two blades in front of her, and as soon as she was up on her target she pulled them up and away, leaping into the air.

Claire took a sharp intake of breath as Alice landed on the other side of the Umbrella project, facing away from it as it split in two and fell to the ground with several wet thumps.

Claire walked forward until she was in front of Alice, both of them grinning and letting out a relieved laugh, resting their foreheads together as they caught their breath.

"You're right; we probably should have gone back to the van." Alice said, nudging the redhead with her shoulder.

"Yeah, it was nice in there, wasn't it?" Claire laughed.

Alice nodded in agreement, then suddenly reached her neck out and caught Claire's lips with her own. When the short kiss broke, Claire's eyes were closed, and she opened them slowly.

Not sure what to do with the random encounter, she smiled self consciously and said "Let's go see what we can find inside."

After Alice had reclaimed her gun and Claire had reloaded hers, they entered the dark building, Claire first with the flashlight and Glock pointed outwards at the ready. The two women quickly scanned the aisles of the small gas station, pointing the yellow beam of light into all the corners to check for hidden threats. Surprisingly, the small store was still well stocked with food, even if it was only crappy on the go trucker food.

When Claire was satisfied with the quiet station, she told Alice to bring the van around. Alice stopped the vehicle with the back doors open facing the broken down door of the building, and the women began grabbing any useful packaged foods on the shelves and carting them into the back of the van; everything from tiny bowls of cereal and granola bars to taco shells and canned fruit.

They hit the refrigerators along the sides of the store next, grabbing all the bottles and jugs of water they could find. Then Alice made her way to the back of the store through a door, coming out with a handful of clothes, mostly dark blue shirts with JERRY'S GAS written in white script along the upper left side. She tossed them into the back of the van and shut the doors, making her way around to the driver's side as Claire appeared and climbed into the passenger's seat, holding a plastic blue bag full of cigarette cartons.

"Really?" Alice laughed, gesturing to the bag.

"Don't judge me. It's not like anyone else here was going to use them." She replied, glancing back at the dead creature split in two in the rear view mirror.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Alice said with a grimace.

Claire nodded. "Good idea. I'd kill for a shower and a nap."

"Hah! And just where do you expect to find a working shower around here, huh?" The blonde asked, amused.

Claire sighed. "I have no idea. It was a nice thought though."

"Well take comfort in the fact that you can at least have a nap when we get back."

"Yeah, but after what we just saw, I doubt I'll be sleeping for a lonnnng time."

After arriving back at the camp, Claire immediately reported to Mikey, who had taken over the watch shift after Carlos. It was still dark outside, and the rest of the convoy was still asleep except for Kmart and two older men, who were sitting by the fire. Mikey was ecstatic about the arrival of new supplies, as everyone else would be as soon as they woke.

Claire tiredly shuffled over to the SUV and opened up the back, revealing a makeshift bed of blankets and tattered old pillows. She climbed into the otherwise empty car and shut the back door. Collapsing onto the blankets, she kicked her boots off lazily and unhooked her gun holster. She had just finished piling her things against the side of the car when there was a knock on the window.

She looked over to see Alice peering inside the tinted black window, one gloved hand held over her brow. Claire reached forward and opened the back door, allowing Alice to climb in before she shut it again.

"Wild night, huh?" Alice asked. Claire nodded, falling down onto the blankets again.

"Yes ma'am. Hopefully I will actually be able to sleep some tonight."

Alice began stripping herself of her jacket and the many guns holstered to her body, then the knives, and set them against the opposite side of the car from Claire's. She took off her shoes and gloves, and then lay back with her arms crossed under her head.

"What are you doing?" Claire asked with a small laugh. Without the arsenal of weapons strapped to her, Claire could see the enticing shape of Alice's body, her pale skin glowing in the moonlight, tormenting the redhead.

"I'm here so you can sleep." She replied simply, staring at the ceiling.

"What?" Claire asked, confused, rolling onto her side.

"You said you might not be able to sleep because of that thing today. So I'm here to protect you while you sleep." Alice turned her head so that her eyes met Claire's solid green. "So you don't have to worry."

Claire opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again, speechless. Instead, she silently climbed on top of the blonde, leaned down, and kissed her softly on the lips. Alice inhaled sharply, taken by surprise, but kissed back, her bare hands sliding onto Claire's shoulders to pull her down onto the blonde. She pushed the curtain of strawberry red hair behind Claire's ears as her lips caressed the others'.

Claire's entire body was tingling like she was on eight different amphetamines and her heart was threatening to break loose from her chest with its incessant pounding. Her hands found Alice's and she intertwined their fingers above the blonde's head, shifting herself further down Alice's body to place a few light kisses on her neck.

Her leg caught between Alice's, causing the blonde to breathe quickly, then roll over until she was on top of Claire, moving her own leg to mimic the redhead's position a few seconds earlier. Claire bit back as gasp and Alice smirked.

"Go to sleep, Claire." She said in her rough voice.

"I don't think I want to sleep anymore," Claire said with her own mischievous grin.

"Hey, the leader needs her sleep," Alice argued, rolling off the other woman and wrapping an arm around her waist. A sneaking yawn worked its way out of Claire's mouth. "See?"

"Fiiiiine," Claire said. "But you better be here when I wake up."

"Like I said, I'm here so you don't have to worry." Alice placed a gentle kiss on Claire's lips once more before the redhead closed her eyes. She snuggled against the warmth of the woman next to her, and for the first time since entering Raccoon City so long ago, Claire Redfield felt safe.


	6. Chapter 6

_To all the readers: Thank you for the comments! Sorry it's taken so ridiculously long to get the next chapter up, but here's a little update just in time for the holidays._

CHAPTER 6

Alice lay completely still in the dark SUV, wide awake and alert but relaxed, calm at the same time. Her head was propped up on her elbow and her other arm remained draped over Claire's midsection, hugging the slumbering woman to her in a gentle yet firm cradle.

The redhead sighed softly in her sleep, turning over on her side to face Alice with closed eyes. Alice smiled, brushing angel soft hair out of Claire's face and pulling the blanket up over her shoulder as a shiver rustled through Claire's delicate body.

It was strange, Alice thought, how quickly she had come to care for the younger woman. The first few days after saving the group of survivors from the horde of crows, Alice had found it fun to pick at Claire's self righteous and plan-focused ways. Now she realized that she actually liked the woman. She liked finding new ways to get under Claire's skin, anything to make her scoff or roll her eyes. Angry, annoyed Claire was cute.

A rough wind rocked the car they were in slightly, enough to shake the sleeping woman, and she rolled in closer to Alice, moaning sleepily and opening her eyes reluctantly. Her groggy gaze fixed on the blonde and a small smile appeared on her face.

"Hey," Alice said.

"Hey back," Claire yawned, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and scratching at the back of her neck. "What time is it?"

"Early. Probably about five."

Claire's eyes bulged. "In the a.m.? I'm going back to sleep!" She rolled over and yanked the blanket over her head. "Wake me when it's actually morning."

Alice rolled her eyes and flung the blanket back from Claire's face. "It is morning, dummy."

"Not to normal peopleee," Claire whined. "Why do I have to get up?"

"Because I'm bored and don't want to listen to your snoring anymore."

Claire narrowed her eyes. "I do NOT snore."

"Oh yes you do. Loudly. At odd intervals. In between the giggle fits."

"Shut the fuck up!" The redhead smacked Alice on the arm, who lowered her head to hide her escaping laugh.

"Hey, I speak only the truth." Alice protested, holding her hands up in the air, palms out flat, in surrender. "If you don't like it, get some help. There are a number of wonderful programs available to you for just the low price of nineteen ninety-nine, void where prohibited."

"You speak lies!" Claire narrowed her eyes playfully.

"At least I don't snore…" Alice mumbled, raising her eyebrows and lowering her eyes to the floor.

"You shut up!"

Alice's eyes creased with a smirk.

"Or you'll make me?" She gave a wink.

Claire crossed her arms, pretending not to be amused. "Yes."

"What're you going to do, bat your eyes at me until I pass out from cuteness overload?"

The red head put on a thoughtful face, contemplating, then fluttered her eyelids at the other with the most adorable face she could muster up.

Alice clutched her heart, falling backwards.

"Can't… take… cuteness! Too… much…. Going dark…" She let out one last gasp, sitting forward quickly with an outstretched hand, then mock-dying.

Claire resisted a giggle fit, instead climbing on top of the blonde in a straddle.

"You're ridiculous," She said, still grinning.

Alice opened one eye slightly in a squint.

"Quick, revive me!" She whispered, and then promptly shut her eye again.

Claire rolled her eyes, slapping at the itch on her neck again, and then leaned forward to gently press her lips against the blondes'. Alice's head rose up to continue to the kiss as Claire began to pull away, and the blonde sat up fully, leaning the other back into her arms smoothly, strong muscles holding Claire securely suspended in the lean. Claire's arms found their way around Alice's neck to pull them closer, melting into the feel of the younger woman's soft skin against hers, and now Alice was over top of Claire.

She threaded her fingers through impossibly silky smooth strawberry hair, pushing strands away from Claire's neck and replacing them with her own lips. She was surprised at how warm the younger girl's skin felt under the mouth, and she grinned inwardly at the thought of Claire's flushed face. The blonde looked over at her and was pleased to see a light pink blush across Claire's cheeks.

Slowly pushing the fabric of the red heads' shirt up, her hands slipped under to feel the soft skin of her stomach, feeling the tight muscles underneath contract as her hands moved the shirt higher.

Alice placed two gently kisses above her navel, then paused, noticing how much cooler Claire's stomach was compared to her neck. She pulled away from the other woman, who opened her eyes, confused.

"What?" Claire asked, looking not a little disappointed.

Alice sat up and Claire followed. The blonde lightly placed the back of her hand on Claire's forehead, then neck.

"You have a fever," She said, a small crease appearing in her brow as she frowned. "Do you feel okay?"

Claire reciprocated the look.

"I feel fine," She said, shrugging and scratching her neck. "Except for this damn itch. Must have gotten bit by something last night."

Alice's frown grew. She reached over to pull back the curtain of red hair masking porcelain skin. She swallowed hard.

"Claire…"

"What? What?" Panicked.

Alice sighed, closing her eyes.

"What, exactly, bit you?"

Claire's eyes widened in horror. She scrambled over the back seats of the SUV to the driver's seat and practically yanked the rear view mirror off trying to angle it so she could get a look at her neck.

She felt herself deflate, every last bit of hope draining from her as she saw the bright red irritated rash stretching from the back of her neck around to the side of her ear. It itched like hell.

Flinging herself away from the mirror, she clawed at the rash, eyes wide with hysteria, writhing in the seat as if the irritation was alive and attacking her.

Alice watched helplessly from the back, unable to think. She watched Claire scratch her skin raw until blood began to seep from beneath her fingers. The red drops seemed to spur Alice into action, and she too clambered over the seats to the passenger's side. She grabbed Claire's now stained hands and ripped them away from her skin, clasping them firmly to her lap in an iron tight handcuff hold.

"Claire. Claire!" She called, until the red head finally stopped struggling and met her blue eyes. "Stop it."

It was more a plea then a command, and Alice's voice sounded unusually small in the quiet morning.

"I've got it, Alice." Claire moaned, her face contorting in a mask of fear, resignation, despair.

Alice swallowed. "How?"

"Last night," The younger woman shook her head, not able to meet the other's eye. "With that Umbrella mutant, giant, whatever. It got cut, and the blood hit me in the face. I thought I was fine, I wiped it clean immediately, and everyone else who got infected showed the first signs within a few hours, but I didn't. I didn't know! And now I-" Her voice broke.

Alice closed her eyes against the realization.

"It's not the normal T virus."

Claire's brow furrowed in confusion. "But when-"

"It's a different strand." The blonde didn't think it had been possible for Claire to look any more shaken. She was wrong. She sighed.

"The usual run of the mill zombies that we encounter? Part of the first initial spill of the T virus at the underground lab. But those other things; the lickers, the mutants, the tyrant… there are other strands of the virus. Like the G virus."

"Oh. Great." Sarcasm dripped from Claire's voice.

"You said you just got it in your eyes or mouth, right? You weren't injected with anything, or stabbed?"

"No. Not that it really matters, I'm still fucking infected!"

"Yeah, but this means that it's a form of one of the t virus strands. That's good news."

"How, exactly, is that good news?" Claire asked, exasperated. Her itching neck wasn't improving her mood now that it felt like liquid fire was shooting up and down her veins.

"If it was the G virus, I would be a lot more worried. With the G strand, infected never stop mutating. Not until they're killed. But that one is only transferred through injection, pure and simple. And the first symptom is chest pain, which you don't have, right?"

"Riiiight…" Claire said, not quite following the rapid stream of information.

"So, the t virus has an antidote. I've seen it, I've used it before. All we have to do it find an Umbrella lab and we're golden. Since you weren't bitten or scratched directly, the effects should take longer to show up with you. We more time this way. Just need to find a lab…"

Alice was already moving, back to the pile of blankets, and putting on the rest of her clothes and gear, quickly checking several guns to make sure they were loaded.

"Alice, slow down!" Claire practically yelled. The blonde stopped dead in her tracks, looking back in question. "I don't know what to do."

Alice reached her hand out to grasp Claire's helping her back over the seats to sit down. She wrapped her arms around the red head and pulled her close.

"Step one: breathe. Step two: hope that if I can't find the antidote, _which I will_, that you will get awesome super powers like me." She grinned as she heard Claire let out a small laugh.

Claire suddenly pushed away from Alice as a knock on the back door startled her.

"Claire, it's Carlos!" Came the familiar voice from outside. Claire glanced back at Alice quickly.

"Don't tell him." She begged, and relief flooded her system when she saw Alice nod once, although she didn't look happy about it. She mouthed a silent thank you.

Claire opened the door.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Claire opened the door. Stepping outside into the chilly morning air, she expected to feel overly hot or light headed with her newfound illness, but instead just felt slightly shaky and nervous. Not to mention itchy. She scratched at the side of her arm.

Someone cleared their throat in front of Claire. She looked up to see Carlos in the dim light, eyeing her arm as she compulsively scratched. She forced her hand away from the burning patch of skin, crossing her arms in front of her chest to restrain herself, and felt the bite of the wind on her exposed flesh. She felt familiar hands sweep across her back as Alice appeared behind her, draping a blanket over her shoulders. The blonde stood next to and slightly behind her, warm hands lingering on the small of her back, hidden covertly by the blanket. Claire tried not to sigh contently as she felt her shirt lift up slightly above her waistband.

"What's up, Carlos?" Claire asked, bringing herself back to reality. She followed his eyes, which were shifting from Alice to her, then back to the SUV from where they both had emerged. She guessed Alice noticed too, because the warmth disappeared from her lower back as her shirt settled back into place. Alice discretely put her hands in her pockets and shifted away from the red head.

"Mikey's picked up something on the radar." Carlos said, still holding Alice's gaze out of the corner of his eye. "A vehicle. Heading this way."

"How fast? Think we should flag them down?" Claire asked. It was rare to find another working vehicle on the roads, especially at night or at this hour.

"They were going top speed, but slowed down a couple miles away. If we do draw attention to ourselves and it's Umbrella…" He trailed off, the implication clear.

Claire's brow furrowed. She uncrossed her arms, moving to scratch her arm again, but a sidelong look at Alice's warning expression changed her mind, and she clasped her hands behind her back instead. "Why do we have any reason to think that it's Umbrella, other than the fact that it's hard to find survivors driving cars down the freeway?"

Carlos glanced in Alice's direction once again. "They might be looking for… something."

Hot anger shot through Claire's body in sparks as Carlos's accusation registered in her brain. She glared at him with a venom reserved for only her worst enemies. He seemed to shrink back a bit.

"Just what, exactly, are you implying, Carlos?" Her voice came out low and threatening, barely distinguishable from a growl as she stepped protectively in front of Alice.

Carlos sighed. "I'm just saying that they have good reason to be looking for her. She's part of their research, like it or not, and if they can somehow trace her, if they come here looking for her, it would put everyone here in danger."

"If you want her out, _friend_, just say so."

Behind her, Alice swallowed and bowed her head a bit. "It's okay, Claire. He's right. I've stayed here too long already."

Claire shook her head, turning to the blonde and grabbing gloved hands in her own. "N-no, he's not. You need to stay here, I-" She stopped, quickly lowering her voice. "I need you here, Alice, baby, please don't let him-" Her throat choked up at the thought of Alice going away, and she fell against the taller woman, griping her tightly around the waist. "Who's going to help me if you leave?" She whispered, fear consuming her now.

She knew that if she let Carlos or anyone else in the convoy know what was happening with her, they would take precautions. They would do whatever they had to to keep the people safe.

They would kill her.

She felt Alice's arms tighten around her and felt her head shift against Claire's own, probably looking at Carlos. Shit. She'd completely lost control of herself.

She pushed away from the comfort of the other woman and faced Carlos again, grimacing inwardly at his bewildered face. She could see the questions racing through his mind at once, and again, his vision took the pattern of switching between both women and the SUV's makeshift bed. Understanding clouded through his eyes, floating down like a falling veil from his face, letting his jaw drop open slightly.

"Look," He started, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes to retain his focus. "Whatever is going on here, with… this," He waved his hand in the general direction of both the women, "can wait. There's a vehicle coming right at this camp, and we have no idea what or who is in it or if they know we're here or not. You're the _leader_. What do you want to do?" The emphatic sarcasm wasn't even remotely masked.

"Flag it." Claire said simply. Her voice was cold stone as she looked Carlos dead in the eyes.

"Yes ma'am." He said, flourishing his hand with a mocking bow. Then he raised an eyebrow at Alice. "Or is it sir?"

He walked away before Claire could respond, her face flushing red in the rising morning light. Her heart thudded beneath her chest and her lungs were working double time to try to calm her down. She felt a hand on her shoulder. Alice.

"You okay?" A soft voice from behind her.

"I feel like an idiot. I can't believe I did that. I shouldn't have done that. Why would I do that? I need a cigarette." She sat down in the sand, patting her pockets for the small carton box. Alice knelt beside her and held out the pack of reds. Claire's shaky fingers could barely manage to pull one of the stick out. Alice held the lighter for her before lighting her own cigarette.

"He'll get over it." She tried to comfort the red head.

"No he won't. He's got a complex. I should have told him when it first started happening, when you first… I did it wrong." She took a long drag off the cigarette.

"You didn't even know what was going on yourself." Alice said, reaching forward to tuck strawberry hair behind Claire's ear. "How's your neck?"

Claire scratched unyieldingly at her arm. "Neck's fine."

Alice gently pulled Claire's damaging claws away from her arm again, placing them around her own neck and pulling the other girl into her lap.

"What are you doing" Claire asked, almost completely out of energy to fight the open display of affection. Alice leaned forward again and this time caught Claire's lips with her own, the light pressure making the read head moan softly. "Stop," She whispered, not meaning it at all. Alice deepened the kiss, brushing her tongue against Claire's bottom lip, her mouth opening slightly in response. Tingles waved through her body so swiftly that she couldn't feel her limbs. The incessant itching was gone.

The itching, Claire thought.

She pushed the blonde away quickly. "Alice, stop!"

Alice fell backwards, looking hurt. "Wha-"

"Nononono you didn't do anything, it's just… I don't want the… I'm sick, Alice. It's contagious."

Alice tried very hard not to laugh at how worried her girl looked. She failed. "Claire, you've seen what I can do, right? You heard what Carlos said about me being part of Umbrella's research? He wasn't lying, I'm already infected. I doubt you're puny little t virus can take on whatever's going on in my body, alright?"

Claire raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so your virus is better than mine? That's how it is?"

Alice grinned and Claire's heart melted. "Damn straight."

A loud _phewwww_ sound filled the air above them.

"The flare gun," Claire said, looking up to see the sky streaked with red glow against the rising sun. "We should go see."

Alice nodded and stood up, brushing sand off of her clothes, then helped Claire up with extended arms. They walked towards the road and the sound of the flare, Alice's hand reaching around for Claire's ass and Claire continually slapping it away, giggling.

"Stop it," She laughed, nudging Alice with her shoulder. "You're ruining my solemn leader face."

"It's the sickness, man. I can't control my own limbs." Alice said, sticking her tongue out. Claire snaked her arm around and goosed the blonde next to her, who jumped.

"Yeah, see how you like it!" Claire whispered.

"Do it again, like you mean it this time." Alice winked seductively. Claire was taken aback and remained silent.

Soon they reached a group of people standing by the road. The vehicle was a white van, pulled over and turned off in the sand. Alice and Claire's smiles faded and they grew quiet as they approached, and the throng of people before them parted, revealing a single dark haired man, standing tall in the center of the circle of people, a selection of guns lying in the sand at his feet.

Carlos looked over at the women, his gun remaining pointed at the newcomer.

"Claire," He greeted her, cold undertones audible beneath his formal front. "This is-"

"Chris." She cut him off, staring in amazement at the man before her. "Chris?" There was no doubt in her mind that is was him, he was finally here, but she needed to make sure.

"Claire!" He exclaimed. Recognition flooded his young features, and he dashed through the sand to scoop her up in his arms. He swung her around in circles, kissing the top of her head over and over. Finally, he set her down, but they kept their hands clasped together.

"How did you get here?" She cried out, an enormous smile plastered on her face. "Where have you been? Have you found anyone else? Did you know I was here? How did you find me?"

"Claire, slow down, slow down!" He pushed on her shoulders as if it would curb her enthusiasm. "We'll have plenty of time for questions, right?"

Alice cleared her throat behind Claire, whose smile faded as she realized how little time they really did have.

"Carlos, my _brother_ and I need a few minutes. Make sure everyone gets back to their duties, please?" Carlos nodded briskly, and the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving Claire, Chris, and Alice alone. "Listen, Chris-" Claire started.

"Who's your friend?" Chris asked, looking over at Alice. He tossed her a small smile. Claire blinked several times.

"Alice. She's, um, she's… heh, she's Alice." Claire chickened out, intending to tell her brother just what Alice was to her, but ending up just blabbering.

"Well hi there, Alice. I'm Chris. Redfield." Alice smiled crookedly, throwing a mischievous look at Claire that she couldn't place.

"Hi." The blonde said simply. "Some sister you got here." She draped her arm around Claire's shoulder and pulled her into her side, sliding her fingers slowly down Claire's side as she let go. Claire shivered. She nervously began scratching at her arm, catching her brother's attention.

"Claire," He said, frowning at her curiously. "Your arm looks like…"

"Chris, please be quiet!" She almost yelped, her eyes pleading.

"No." He met her eyes with a fearful and bewildered expression. "You're… no."

"There's an antidote." Alice said, her voice falling flat in the air. Chris's head shot up as he locked gazes with her.

"Where?"

"Umbrella lab. I know where one is, not too terribly far away. We can make it in a day without having to move the rest of the convoy."

"What are we waiting for?" He asked, moving to pick up his arsenal of guns and replace them in their holsters.

"I'm coming." Claire said. Chris snorted.

"Like hell you are. By the time we get there you'll be in no condition to help fight if we need you, and we can't afford to have anyone dragging us down. This is too important, Claire."

The red head stepped up to Chris's face. "I'm. Coming."

Chris glared down at her and tilted his head, about to get into it with his sister, when Alice laughed. He looked over at her.

"It's no use. When she's set her mind to something… well good luck. You've been spending too much time with me, girl." She sent another devious wink towards Claire, grinning. Claire licked her lips, wanting to be next to the blonde, _now_. She swallowed and shifted her feet in the sand.

"Fine. But you better have lots of firepower with you, little sister." Chris gave in. "We'll take my van."

He quickly walked over to the driver's seat and started the ignition. Alice looked at Claire purposefully.

"You up for this? Don't play hero."

Claire rolled her eyes. "I'm fine. And once we get this antidote, I'll stay that way. So let's get going." She walked past the blonde and started towards the rumbling van.

Alice smirked. "You are just like him."

Claire turned around. "But I'm prettier, right?"

"Duh." The blonde responded, stepping towards the other woman. She reached out with her arm to grab the red heads' hips. Claire stepped closer.

"I want to kiss you." Claire said.

Alice laughed. "Think I'm going to stop you?"

Claire flashed a pained expression towards the front of the van. "Chris doesn't know…"

Alice's hand travelled below the back of the other's waistband, gently pulling the red head closer. Claire could feel hot breath on her ear as Alice whispered "Still not going to kiss me?" Hands moved higher and slipped under her thin shirt, around to the front, higher…

Claire let out a short gasp. "Alice…" She warned, but pressed closer to the blonde, placing her own hands in Alice's shaggy hair, her breath coming in rapid patches.

"You know, I love when we make out against your brother's van. Can I ask you to the school dance now?" Alice joked. "You're really not going to kiss me?"

Claire's head was too foggy. She was dizzy and hot and wanted Alice. She gave in, gripping Alice's head in both hands and crushing her lips to the other's, sliding her hands slowly down Alice's front to down to her thighs, grinning contently as Alice arched into her.

And she fell backwards into the sand.

Alice was beside her in a second, pulling her up and supporting her weight as she walked her to the front of the van.

"We should have left already." Alice said, obviously kicking herself for stalling with stupid games. "You're getting worse."

"I'm fine, Alice."

"I'm fixing this. Now." And with that she pushed Claire into the van, climbing in next to her and shutting the door. They didn't even have time to clip their seatbelts on before Chris stomped on the gas pedal, and Alice was barking out directions, speeding them along to the Umbrella lab and Claire's only hope.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

It didn't take too long to get to the hidden Umbrella facility at all, especially with the way Chris drove at reckless speeds. Although without anyone else on the road, Alice supposed it didn't really matter. The sooner she had that antidote in her hands the better.

She glanced over at Claire, who had fallen asleep about twenty minutes into the drive, her head now resting against Alice's shoulder. Strong shivers shook her small body despite the hot sun beating through the windshield of the van. Alice was having a hard time not pulling the girl into her lap to cradle her close through her feverish sleep, and instead settled for slinging an arm platonically across her shoulders to keep her from falling over. Maybe just a kiss on the forehead wouldn't be giving too much away…

"She seems to like you a lot." Chris said, breaking the silence that had held through the entire drive besides when Alice spoke up to give directions.

"It seems that way." Alice agreed, swelling with internal pride.

"You're lucky; Claire never did take well to strangers, even when we were little. I always said she would never be able to go to bars because she would end up punching the first person who tried to talk to her."

Alice grinned. "Oh, she hasn't changed so much, then. She hated me when we first met."

"Now that can't be true. How could anyone hate you?" Chris glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Alice raised an eyebrow.

"Why Chris Redfield. You don't even know me."

A small smirk ghosted across his features. "Not as well as I'd like to."

"Oh stop it. What would your sister think?"

As if on cue, Claire stirred, slowly opening her eyes and itching her arm. "Alice?" She looked around confused. "Alice?"

Alice tapped her head, which was still resting on her shoulder. "Up here."

Claire looked up and smiled big. "Oh, hey."

Alice returned the smile, resisting the need to kiss those smiling lips. "Hey back. How was your nap?"

"Cold." The red head replied, sitting up.

"Here, take this." Chris said quickly, shimmying out of his jacket and handing it to Claire. Alice discretely slipped her right arm back into her own jacket, disappointed that Chris had beaten her to the punch. It was excruciatingly unbearable for Alice not to be able to show her affection for Claire. She couldn't wait until they were alone together again.

"Your jacket smells like boy." Claire said dryly, wafting the air in front of her nose with her hand. Alice chuckled.

"Well excuse me, your highness, I'll just take it back then!" Chris joked.

"No! It's warm and snuggly." She said with a pout, wrapping the large jacket more tightly around her midsection. Her brother laughed and shook his head.

"What about you, Alice? Cold? I can turn the heat on if you want." He offered.

"I don't really get cold…" Alice said. "But thanks."

"So you're hot?" He asked with a smirk.

Claire tossed a wild look at her brother. "I'd say she's slightly uncomfortable!"

Chris kept his smirk, muttering "I still say she's hot."

Claire smacked his arm, genuine anger in her eyes. "Stop it!"

"Pull over up here." Alice said, inadvertently halting the growing argument. "On the right. That small shack up ahead."

Chris pulled the van over as directed and cut the engine. Pulling a desert eagle out of his holster, he checked to make sure there was a full clip loaded, then opened the door. "You two should stay here for a minute. I'll do a quick sweep then signal for you if it's alright."

"And if it's not?" Alice asked.

"You'll know." Claire and Chris both said in unison. Claire rolled her eyes.

"You never change, do you, big brother?"

"Would you still love me if I did?" He asked with a charming smile, jumping out of the van. "Watch for my signal. Shouldn't be too long." And with that he was off, running quickly and silently for the cover of the side of the shack.

Alice watched as he vaulted over the small wooden fence around the perimeter of the building, coasting along the side of the shack with his back to the wall, weapon up and ready. He pushed the door open cautiously with the barrel of the firearm, and then, deeming it secure, sidled inside.

Alice listened intently for any signs that something had gone wrong. Hearing none, she turned to Claire.

"Some brother you've got."

"Yeah, he's a real peach. Bit of a control freak though. He likes to just come in and take things over. You two might clash when it comes to that." Claire stuck her tongue out.

"Are you implying that _I_ am a control freak?" Alice feigned innocence, resting her hand on her chest.

A sly smile crossed Claire's face. "Mhm." She pushed Alice back into the van's seat. "So why don't you let me run the controls for a minute while there are no… familial pretenses to uphold?"

Alice peeked over at the shack. No sign of Chris yet. "Sounds good to me." She said, reaching over for Claire, who grabbed her hands in midair and pinned them behind Alice's back.

Climbing onto the blonde's lap, she leaned into the other woman and whispered in her ear "The whole point of _me _controlling is that _you_ just have to sit back and be quiet.

"That's no fun." Alice whined with a pout. "You realize I could break free of you right now, right? Super strength, remember?"

"Try it." Claire breathed into her other ear. She ran her fingers up Alice's arm and over her shoulder to trace her collarbone, following with her lips. Alice's cold skin melted beneath Claire's fiery touch; her vision was consumed by strawberry hair and porcelain skin, bright green eyes and pink lips… lips, brushing against her neck, biting softly, ghosting across her jaw line, then the lips were finally on hers.

Alice moved her arms, deciding that Claire was too far away, but the red head grabbed her wrists again, placing them back, and whispered "No touching." Warm breath in her ear, her sight clouded and her head spun, something stronger than electric currents spiraling through her veins. Claire's lips were back on her own, the red heads' tongue gently prying open Alice's mouth. Alice became aware that she was moaning softly against the light pressure of the kiss, moving her head forward for more.

Claire's hands began to move, finding their way under Alice's shirt, raking across her back, gliding smoothly up her sides. Alice was breathing heavy now, trying to be good, to not move, to not flip Claire over so she was lying on the seat of the van…

"Can I touch you yet?" Her words come out fast and almost blended together in urgency. Claire smirked and shook her head. Alice rested her head on the back of the seat, eyebrows knit together in frustration. "You're killin' me, Redfield."

She was silenced by Claire's hand sneaking past her belt and between her legs, tracing the seam of her pants. Alice let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and swallowed hard. Claire stretched the collar of the blonde's shirt out to kiss farther down her chest, her hand reaching where her mouth couldn't, gently stroking he soft mound of skin under her shirt.

Alice's mouth was completely dry. "Goddammit, Claire…" She closed her eyes against her aggravation as Claire's hand pressed between her legs again, this time not just tracing the seam. A whimper escaped Alice's mouth as she moved against the hand, her entire body screaming at her to touch Claire. Biting her bottom lip, she pressed her back against the seat harder, willing her pinned arms not to move.

"Claire, come onnn…"

The red head's only response was to silence her again by covering her mouth with those delicious lips, opening firmly against her own. Alice let out a short moan as Claire increased the pressure of her hand, rhythmically gliding on Alice.

"Claire, you have no idea how impossibly good you feel right now, but-" She was cut off as Claire gripped her head in both hand and crushed their lips together. "Mm, Chris has probably been signaling for like ten minutes out there." Claire paused.

_You're a moron for stopping this,_ her brain yelled.

_I know, I know!_ She replied.

Claire glanced over her shoulder, as did Alice, to see a thumbs up sign sticking out of the dark doorway. "I hate it when you're right." Claire pouted.

"Yeah, me too." Alice agreed, out of breath. Claire turned back and kissed her once more, very slowly, before climbing out of the van.

"Jesus Christ." She muttered, and followed Claire into the shack.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Inside the shack was cool and dark, a relief from the burning hot sun that was now perched in the sky. Claire blinked several times to try to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was a slow process.

In fact, most of her bodily processes seemed to be slowing down. After she woke from her nap on the ride, she just didn't feel _right_. Her stomach was in knots for no apparent reason, her temperature was fluctuating like a roller coaster, her eyes didn't seem to want to focus, and her balance was completely off. She'd tripped several times on the short trek from the van to the shelter they were now in. It was a good thing Alice was there to help steady her. One thing was for sure; she would never be on top for covert operations in this condition.

_God, Alice,_ she thought. _I basically attacked her in the van. I shouldn't have done that, Chris was right there._ Mentally she would have liked to blame her actions on the sickness; some improper chemical imbalance going on with her hormones, making her act like a crazy teenager. But she had a feeling it was just Alice herself making Claire go crazy. What a strange wakeup call that was for her.

"What the hell were you guys doing out there?" Chris asked, the quiet of his voice not able to hide the annoyed undertones. "I was signaling for like ten minutes!"

Alice nudged Claire with her elbow. "Told you…" She whispered.

"We were playing paddy cake, Chris, what do you think we were doing?" Claire replied, rolling her eyes.

"Hopefully loading your guns." He shot back. "If I know Umbrella, this won't be just a quick in and out deal. We'll either need a lot of firepower, which we don't have, or stealth and skill, which hopefully at least one of us has." He eyed the two women, who were shooting looks at each other and trying not to laugh. Chris sighed. "Never mind. Let's do what we came here to do and get out. If there's one thing I hate, it's freaky Umbrella underground labs."

"So you've had some experience with them?" Alice said, more of a statement than a question.

"More than my fair share, yes. Now there should be some sort of switch or lever around; something to open a passage to an elevator. Assuming this is actually one of the labs and not just some random shack." He shot a skeptical look at Alice, who raised an eyebrow.

"Believe me; this has Umbrella written all over it. I'm good at what I do."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Chris said with a wink. Claire flushed an angry red, gritting her teeth. Her own brother, hitting on her…

_Your what, exactly?_ Her mind asked. _Go on; tell him what she is to you. See how well that goes over. This isn't the time for you to spill your guts; focus, Redfield. Get cured._

Claire turned away from the other two, hiding her pained expression caused partially by the fact that she couldn't tell Chris what was going on, and partially because her veins felt like they were exploding, small rivers of fire, no, lava, flowing rigidly under her skin. She swooned, feeling overwhelmed with heat and dizziness.

The floor was cool. Her head felt better resting upon the dusty wooden planks, even though she had no concept of direction at the moment. Was she on the floor, really? Or against a wall? Maybe she was still standing, and there was a breeze…

"Claire!" Both Alice and Chris's voices; somewhere above her. Man, the floor (Floor? Yes, definitely the floor) felt good. She closed her eyes, and then opened them slowly. She felt hands on her head; soft, feminine, and strong. Alice. She sighed happily, nudging her head against the warm skin. The contrast in temperature was nice.

"Claire, say something!" Alice's rough voice, low in volume but full of urgency. She was worried about something. What? How could she be worrying about anything when there were beautiful rainbows of light dancing around the room? Claire frowned, wanting to help.

"Ungg," She mumbled, reaching for Alice's hand as it left her forehead. She gazed across the darkly lit room, following the dim light patterns on the floor, exposing every grain of wood, every nail head, every dust particle. Except for the wall behind the desk. That was clean; no dust hanging on the plain material of the wall. Claire pointed. Words were too hard to formulate now.

"This is bad." She heard Chris say. His voice was distant. Troubled, too. She wondered what about. "We have to get underground somehow. I know there's a hidden elevator here somewhere. There must be."

"Unnngg," Claire said again, her finger still pointed at the desk.

"But we can't just leave her here, it's way too risky." She heard Alice say. Claire smiled at the familiarity of the voice. She wished it was closer. She missed Alice.

"I know, I know." Chris. He sighed heavily. "I guess we'll have to bring her with us. I hope you know how to cover with that fancy gun of yours."

"This old thing? No problem. You just worry about not getting yourself shot." Claire let out a weak laugh involuntarily. Alice had a habit of making people laugh in bad situations. Claire wanted to talk to her. She struggled to make her mouth work.

"A-aliceee…" She managed to squeak out. She was so tired. It was too hot again, as if the floor had absorbed her fever. She felt hands on her shoulder instantly. Delicate touches.

"Claire? You in there, Redfield?" She spoke in soft tones. The sound of her voice was nice. Too bad it was so dark; Claire would have liked to have been able to see Alice's concerned face. It was adorable, from what she remembered.

"Mmhm." She replied, much later than when the question was posed to her.

"How you feeling, kiddo?" Chris this time, right above her. He was such a good brother…

"Hot. Itchy." Came her response. "Alice…" She tried again.

"I'm right here." The answer came inches from her ear. She shivered.

"Hidden…" Was all she could muster from her vocabulary as she pointed to the desk once more. She heard footsteps going past her, in the direction she had pointed. Good. She saw Chris's boots in front of her, kneeling, prodding with his hands. There was a loud squeal as he pushed the desk aside.

"There's no dust on the wall here. Look at everything else; it's covered with the stuff." She heard her brother say. Smart boy. She saw him push against the wall, and it swung inwards and around, catching on the ceiling like a garage door. "She found it!"

Warm hands scooped her up and she was suddenly in the air, pressed firmly against warm skin, smelling like apples and sand. Like a nice day at the beach.

"I've got you." Alice's voice whispered in her ear.

She sighed in content once again before closing her eyes, resting her head comfortably on Alice's chest, the gentle motion of being carried rocking her to sleep within seconds.

Alice watched with a hard face as the wall in front of them pulled back to reveal a rather unstable looking elevator platform. Around its perimeter was a mesh gating, no lock. She was glad that a black control box was the only thing the elevator had brought up to them. If they had security cameras outside the building, they hadn't picked up on the small trio. Alice kicked herself for not thinking about it earlier.

She didn't hesitate as Chris pulled back the gating, and they both walked onto the naked platform. The male Redfield closed the gate with a soft click and hit a green button on the control box. A low mechanical hum started up as the elevator began its descent, the layers of the visible wall outside the gate speeding past.

Time felt slow.

Alice shifted the sleeping girl in her arms to the left, bringing her now free hand around to aim the Mossberg ahead of her. She didn't struggle with the weight of either.

"So you're a military type guy, right?" She said to Chris. "What's the plan?"

Chris's eyes were fixed on the moving walls, his mouth set in a tight line as he un-holstered the desert eagle. It clicked as he flicked the safety off.

"You shoot high and to the left, from the back corner. I'll take low right. If anything's waiting on the other side when we get down there, it'll be most likely to come straight at the middle of this box. Won't be expecting firepower from the floor." He moved as he talked, lying on his belly at the opposite end of the platform, gun pointed and readied.

Alice felt her body involuntarily tense as the elevator came to a squeaky stop, the ride over. Beyond the gating in front of them was a plain, barren room, a door set in it straight ahead.

Both Alice and Chris swept the room with their eyes, following with guns.

Nothing moved.

Chris got up off the ground and stepped forward, prying back the metal gates and stepping off the platform, quickly dropping to one knee and scanning low with his gun. Alice kept hers pointed out, moving her arm in a wide arc as she followed him. Back to back, they surveyed the room.

"Nothing here." Chris said in a low voice. "Let's see what's behind door number one. I'll cover."

Alice moved towards the door after holstering the compact, pausing with her hand on the knob as she listened intently for any sound outside. Hearing none, she turned the knob.

And a large, dark shape sent Chris flying across the room, his back slamming into the metal grating that lined the elevator. Alice stumbled backwards reflexively, tightening her grip on Claire, not willing to put the girl down to fight. She pulled the Mossberg out again with impossible speed, aiming at the ferociously writhing black dog on top of Chris, and pulled the trigger.

Her shot went high as a force crashed into her legs, knocking her back a few steps. She quickly regained her footing and targeted the second dog in front of her. It stepped towards her slowly, jowls dripping with white saliva. Its sickening skin hung off of its bones in raw strips of slick red and black, the meat visible underneath.

Alice sent two shots flying at the beast, each making a thick sound as they penetrated the once-dog's head. It fell with a whimper, twitched twice, and then was still.

She suddenly remembered Chris, and turned to see him standing over the other creature now lying on the floor, lifting his boot, and bringing it down on the thing's skull with a sickening crunch.

"Waste of ammo." He said to her before he looked up, breathing heavily from his struggle. She looked down at his blood-caked boot.

"Wipe your shoe off. You'll leave prints." She said. He ripped the sleeve off of his shirt and quickly wiped down his boot.

"Good call. I guess you're not so useless in a pinch after all." He shot her a grin.

"Yeah, let's just hope infected dogs are the worst thing waiting down here." Alice replied. She felt Claire shift in her arm and looked down to see the red head's eyes opening. Her pupils were extremely dilated. Alice felt a surge of adrenaline. Claire's mouth worked as if she wanted to speak, but couldn't, and a moment later her eyes closed again. "Let's get going."

Chris led the way out of the bare room, into a brightly lit hallway that ended in an L shape about thirty feet down. There were three doors in the immediate hallway. Chris sidled up to the first, and Alice stood behind and to the right of him, covering with the compact.

He opened the door silently yet quickly, scanning the room with his desert eagle. It was clear; just a bathroom. Alice let out the breath she had been holding.

The next room was clear as well, unless a few cots and a coffee maker were considered threatening or dangerous.

The third room was held shut by a sliding mechanical door, which had been left unlocked. Inside was a mesh gating surrounding an indoor kennel and a keypad on the wall next to the doorway.

"This is where the dogs must have come from." Chris said.

"No shit, captain obvious." Alice said with a roll of her eyes.

Chris smirked. "You know, some people say my most attractive quality is my ability to state the obvious in times of peril."

"Chris, focus. Someone let those dogs out. They know we're here."

As if on cue, a door slammed shut somewhere down the hallway. Both Alice and Chris's heads whipped around towards the sound, and then they were running, following the L shaped hall into a dead end, weapons out. They stopped just in time to see the tail end of a white lab coat disappearing into a door on the right.

"There." Chris growled, gliding purposefully and slowly towards the door. "What we need is in there."

They each stood on either side of the door, staring at the keycard mechanism on the wall. There was no other door, no back way in, and definitely no turning back.

"What now, do we just punch in random numbers on this keypad and try to lock pick the slider?" Chris asked, his voice thick with frustration. Alice set Claire down gently against the wall, checking her pulse just to be sure. Still beating. Still strong.

"I don't know." She admitted with a sigh, slumping to the ground in defeat.

"What if we go back? Find another facility, maybe a bigger one; increase the chance of finding something useful?"

"It's too late for that; it has to be this one. There, in that room." Alice gestured to the locked door with a nod of her head.

"Well we're obviously not getting in that way, so what do you suggest?" Chris asked, the anger in him making his voice louder.

"I don't know!" Alice repeated, matching his volume, hysteria on the edge of her mind. "All I know is the only thing that can help Claire is in that room, and we need to get in there. Otherwise your sister is dead!"

Chris had been pacing in circles, and now stopped to stare at Alice, eyes wide, face flushed red. "Why does it matter to you so much anyway?" He wasn't getting any quieter. "If she dies it's no sweat off your back, just another one of your friends killed in this insane Umbrella apocalypse! I'm her brother! I'm supposed to protect her! So why the hell do you even care?"

"Because I love her!"

Silence.

Alice hadn't meant to say it, it had just slipped out. She sat perfectly still.

Chris stood rooted to the spot, chest still rising up and down quickly from his rant, but his skin had paled considerably. His wide, confused eyes met Alice's.

"You love her?"

She nodded.

"Like, as a friend, right?"

She shook her head no.

Chris blinked slowly. "What? How could… Claire… she was always so…"

Without warning, Chris let out a mighty yell and slammed his fist into the keypad on the wall, electric sparks shooting out from under his curled fingers. He stayed like that for a few seconds.

The mechanical door slid open.

Alice jumped to her feet as Chris blinked in confusion at the now open doorway. Then reality sunk in and he scrambled for his weapon, half leaping into the white room after Alice.

His heroic burst of energy was cut short as soon as he entered the room, however, at the sight of a man in a white lab coat holding Alice's throat in the crook of his elbow, a gun aimed outwards at Chris.

"Drop it and kick it to me." The man said, motioning to the desert eagle. A plastic nametag pinned to his coat read 'Dr. Benner.'

Chris did as he was told, his gun skidding across the floor past the doctor and under a metal table in the center of the room.

"What's the haps, Doc?" He asked with an angry, defiant sneer. Out of the corner of his eye, he took in as much of his surroundings as he could. He'd had enough experience with Umbrella nut jobs to know to keep them talking while he figured out a plan. To his left was a shelf full of vials and syringes, sprawled out with no visible order. He had a plan.

"I know you." Benner said, crinkling his eyebrows. "Chris Redfield, ex- S.T.A.R.S. member. You been a pain in Umbrella's ass for quite some time now."

Chris was taken aback, but was determined not to show it. "Hear that, I'm famous!" He said to Alice, forcing a grim smile. "So what's your story, Doc? Dedicated scientist too proud to leave his research when the world ended? Or just left behind by his superiors without a car or plane?"

"It's in his pocket, Chris." Alice said, her voice calm despite her current position. Chris's gaze settled on a bulge in one of the lab coat pockets. He inched to the left, barely noticeable. Alice looked over at the shelf, and then locked eyes with him.

"Don't mistake me for one of those over-eager kiss asses who feel the need to tell everyone they meet their silly plans of world domination or undeserved justice." Benner replied. Oh yeah, this guy was a fruit loop alright. "I know you've come here for the t virus antidote. Unfortunately, you won't be leaving with it." He paused, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Or leaving at all, for that matter. It's a shame the dogs didn't kill you earlier when I let them out. I hate having to clean up blood."

The doctor had let his guard down, and Alice took her chance. She swung her leg between Benner's and kicked, hard. His balance gone, he toppled over, landing at Chris's feet.

Chris slapped at the shelf next to him, snatching up one of the syringes filled with a greenish liquid, and lunged foreword, stabbing the needle into Benner's neck.

"Chris, don't!" Alice yelled. It was too late.

The liquid slid easily out of the tip of the syringe and into the doctors' veins. He gasped for air, grappling at Chris's boot in front of him, and then fell still. Chris kneeled down and checked the pulse. Slower, but still there.

"You moron." Alice growled. He looked at her, bewildered.

"What?"

"You have no idea what was in that. For all you know, you could have just made him even stronger than the worst fucked up creature you've had to fight since this shit started." She strutted past the baffled man and bent down, fishing a vial out of the unconscious Benner's jacket. She rushed back out the door to where Claire still lay, breathing deeply in her fever coma.

"Don't touch her!" Chris yelped involuntarily, pushing past Alice to sit by his sister. He was still freaked out about Alice's incredible revelation earlier. He didn't want her anywhere near his little sister.

"Fine." She said, visibly annoyed and angered. She tossed a clean syringe at him and he caught it, sticking it into the vial and pulling out the liquid antidote.

"Whatever happened to gummy medicines?" He muttered, carefully injecting the tip of the needle into Claire's arm after tapping the tube several times. He pushed the top down until all of the liquid was emptied from the syringe. "Now what?" He asked, looking over at Alice for guidance.

"Now we wait." She said simply, standing in the still opened doorway of the room.

Behind her, Doctor Benner rose.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

"Anything yet?" Chris asked impatiently. Alice knelt over Claire's still unconscious body, two fingers pressed to her pulse.

"It's going to take more than thirty seconds to work." She replied, rolling her eyes.

"Well there has to be something you can- oof!"

Alice turned her head quickly at the sound of a dull thump, seeing Chris crumble to the floor. She was on her feet immediately, gun drawn and pointed forward before she could even see what the threat was.

Her eyes focused on a long white lab coat; Dr. Benner.

She flashed back to Chris, jabbing the doctor with the unknown liquid in the syringe. He had fallen, but hadn't cried out in pain, or gasped in surprise; almost like the drug had put him to sleep quickly before he could even register what had happened. Whatever had been in that vial that was now flowing freely though the doctor's veins must have a lot of accelerated healing power for him to have gotten up quickly.

Stepping protectively in front of Claire, Alice looked behind Benner at Chris, wanting to make sure he was still breathing. She felt instantly better when she saw the slow rise and fall of his chest.

Benner took a step forward, mimicking Alice's action. He looked almost the same, except for the dark circles enveloping his eyes, making it look as if he was wearing great gobs of make up on his face. It was almost comical. Alice probably would have laughed if Benner wasn't moving an arm forward, if his purplish-gray skin wasn't stretching inspector gadget style, if a strange, slimy tentacle wasn't starting to protrude from the balmy palm of his wrinkled hand.

Benner grinned at her from beneath his dark eyebrows; an evil grin that showed his over-confidence. He was going to win and he knew it. Alice also believed it as three more tentacles slid smoothly out of his palm to join the other; as if they were their own separate entities.

Chris let out a weak cough from his limp post on the floor. Alice looked over at him, and the next thing she knew, she was looking at the ceiling.

Shaking off her confusion, Alice scrambled to her feet, reaching for her gun, and realized she had dropped it when she fell. She glanced quickly around the hallway and saw it on the floor next to Claire. Alice realized she must have been knocked back at least twenty five feet from when she had been standing before. Damn tentacles.

She started forward to reclaim the compact gun, but stopped suddenly, seeing Benner moving towards her as well. It wasn't the fact that he was moving that made her stop dead in her tracks; it was that he was _changing_ as he walked. With each step his skin got closer to a grayish-green, his eyes drooped a little more, and he was getting taller. Three large spikes abruptly tore out of his left shoulder and he howled in pain, his face a mask of rage and tempered violence.

The vicious burst of outrage from Benner seemed to spur on his mutation quicker, if that was even possible, Alice thought. What were left of his hands were now smashed together lumps of rotten flesh; five serrated claws protruding out of the ends like horrible, jagged fingers. His leg and bicep muscles had seemed to burst forth from under the now loose and peeling skin, surfacing in red gory strips that stretched and twitched.

As Alice looked at the face of the hideous, bile-inducing creature that used to be Doctor Benner, its jaw unhinged, dropping at least six inches from where it should have been, and now the tentacles from before were coming out of its mouth, reaching out slowly and waving in the air before Alice as if they were in some kind of death dance.

This time Alice saw it. A purplish tentacle; once second gesticulating with the others, and the next shooting across the hall at her, striking her side as she tried to spin out of the way in time.

_Damn those things are fast,_ she thought. She knew that one good shot to the head point blank would take the former Benner down, his skull hadn't seemed to thicken any. The problem was now he was standing in between Alice and her gun, still moving towards her. _For_ her.

The Benner creature let out a ferocious shriek, high pitched and rumbling at the same time, and Alice braced herself for whatever was coming.

She didn't see the tentacle, just felt it as it closed around her wrist with incredible strength. She let out a cry of disgust and tried to pry it off with her other hand, but as soon as her fingers touched the slimy, writhing appendage a second one grabbed her other hand, slamming her against the wall hard enough to make her see stars.

With both arms restrained, Alice had no choice but to struggle helplessly and watch as the last two tentacles sliced smoothly through the air to wind around her legs. She was going to die. She was reckless and unperceptive and now she would pay for it, being quartered, her body being torn apart by her limbs. She wondered how long it would hurt for.

And suddenly she felt all four tentacles tense up. She braced herself for the impact, moving her eyes up to stare defiantly into those of the ruined Doctor.

Instead her gaze met intense green eyes.

Claire was awake, holding the barrel of Alice's Mossberg against the creature's head. Alice felt a mixture of cooling relief and chilling fear for Claire.

But the redhead's eyes were determined and full of anger.

"Say uncle." She said in a stony voice, pressing the barrel tighter against the thing's skin. Then she pulled the trigger.

Alice fell simultaneously with Benner, both of them hitting the floor seconds after the gun sounded. The blonde kicked and tore at the tentacles that still held her, even though their grip had loosened. She finally freed herself and managed her climb shakily back to her feet.

Claire was already standing next to her.

"Loose something?" She asked with a smirk, holding out the Mossberg.

Alice lowered her head and laughed in relief, taking the gun back and returning it to its holster on her back. "Thanks. Hey, I thought you said next time you have to save my ass you were just going to let fate put me out of my misery?" Alice couldn't hide her grin as she spoke.

"Well maybe I decided I like your ass."

Alice waggled her eyebrows and Claire rolled her eyes.

"You know what I meant."

Alice's smile dissipated slowly as she looked over the other woman. "You're feeling okay?" She asked, noting that her regular light but healthy skin color had returned, and her eyes looked normal again.

"Yeah. Seems like a few hours' worth of napping and one little injection can cure just about anything. Are you okay?"

The reality of the situation suddenly hit Alice; not being able to get to Chris, almost loosing Claire, almost dying. She suddenly felt very tired.

"Alice?" The redhead asked tentatively.

Alice walked forward, closing the distance between the two of them, and wrapped her arms around Claire. "Don't fucking scare me like that again." She whispered, burying her face in Claire's shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair.

Claire stroked the back of Alice's hair, then kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry. I'll try not to have any more zombie/apocalyptic play dates anytime soon."

Alice lifted her face up level with Claire's, leaning in to softly brush her lips against the redhead's. Claire swooned, the contact unexpected, and Alice moved her hands to support her so she didn't fall.

"You're a walking disaster, Redfield." The blonde said, shaking her head.

"And you talk too much." She replied, pulling Alice's face towards her own, her heartbeat flooding out any the sound in the room as her lips met Alice's again. Her eyes fluttered closed.

Alice guided Claire towards the wall, pushing her against it as she lifted the redhead's shirt. Her lips traced the lines of Claire's abs contracting and tightening under Alice's breath. Warm hands ghosted up the inner seam of Claire's legs slowly, painfully slowly, stopping before…

"Alice! Alice!" Claire was smacking her on the top of the head, trying to get her attention.

"Whaaaat?" She groaned, straightening up, but Claire was already on the other side of the hallway, kneeling over her brother, who was finally waking up.

Alice set her jaw and narrowed her eyes. This brother person was really starting to cramp her style.


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

"Carlos told me about you."

Chris had spoken without even looking over his shoulder as Alice silently approached him. The kid was good.

It was the night after he, Alice, and Claire had returned from their rescue adventure, and Chris was on watch, sitting by the blazing fire, poking it with a long stick every few seconds to keep the crackling licks of flame alive and frenzied. There were a few logs wedged into the sand around the make shift fire pit, giving the convoy at least some semblance of shabby living room comfort. Alice sat on the log across from Chris.

"Carlos needs to learn to keep his mouth shut." Alice said with a small smile. Her friend was mouthy but he always had people's best interests in mind. She trusted him. "What did he say?"

Chris continued jabbing the stick into the heart of the fire, stirring the coals underneath to send short gusts of warm air into their faces.

"He said that you and he went way back. He told me about the start of the spill at Raccoon and how you ended up here. He said that you give off an intimidating first impression but you really just want to help people." He paused, taking another stab at the fire.

Alice raised her eyebrows, sensing that he had more to say. "And?"

"…and he said that my sister had really warmed up to you and I should trust her instincts." She saw Chris swallow hard as he slowly brought his gaze up to meet her blue green eyes, the flickering orange light shadowing his face in a menacing mask.

Alice held his stare, tilting her head slightly as she read the emotions on his face; something else beneath the anger and the hurt and the betrayal he projected. Fear.

Suddenly Alice understood. He wasn't afraid of her, per say, but of what she could do to Claire. He was a typical older brother; he didn't want Claire to get hurt, and knowing what he now did about Alice, about how Umbrella had been tracking her, using her for experimenting, pumping her full of virus… she understood that it wasn't easing his mind about the situation. Mix that together with the interest he had had in her when they were first introduced, and the deceiving Claire had done not telling him about them, and she could have one very angry, resentful man on her hands.

"Do you know what Claire's first instincts about me were?" She asked him, trying to figure out how to approach the situation best.

Chris was silent; just narrowed his eyes a little more.

"She hated me. Wanted me gone from the minute she saw me." Alice worked hard to keep a smile off her face as she spoke. "You have the same first instincts, you two. Go with your gut, Chris. Go with your gut and hopefully you'll feel the same way your sister does now." She paused, furrowing her brow slightly. "Well, maybe not _exactly _how she does…"

Chris let out a small laugh and shook his head. "Been there, done that." He said.

The two fell into a semi-comfortable silence, and Alice felt that the situation was a little better now. Chris would warm up to her again with time.

Alice heard soft footsteps approaching the fire from behind her, stealthy and purposeful. She didn't need to turn around to know who it was.

"Shouldn't you be resting?" Chris asked, taking a break from his poking stick to look at his sister.

"I'm fine, Chris." Claire entered Alice's line of vision, halting the blonde's breath for a few seconds. Claire touched each index finger to her nose in turn, then mock-walked a straight line. "See? Any more questions, officer?"

Chris rolled his eyes. "Keep it up, little sister, and you'll be right back in that sick bed." He couldn't hide the joking twinkle in his eyes.

Claire stuck her tongue out at him playfully and sat down next to Alice. Close. She saw Chris tense up a bit, his shoulders straightening up; eyes flashing towards the small amount of space between the two women. Then he inhaled deeply and went back to stoking the fire.

Claire looked over at Alice for the first time since joining the two around the dancing flames. Tucking long red hair behind her ear, she uttered a small "Hey," quiet and shy.

Alice blinked slowly, saving the mental picture like a snapshot in her head, and smiled roguishly. "Hey back." She said in her rough voice. "Still feeling alright?"

"Yeah, thanks to you."

"You would have done the same for me, I'm sure." Alice said, trying to play it off. The look Claire was giving her was… intense; a look that shouldn't be shared in front of her brother.

_It's like eye sex,_ Alice thought. Her body thrummed with the thought of naked Claire anywhere near her, but again, her attention shifted quickly to Chris, sitting across the fire from them, watching his sister warily. _That is uncomfortable…_

Claire had inched closer discretely, like a magnet to Alice. She could see the steady rise and fall of the red head's chest, and she wondered if Claire could feel the rapid thumping of Alice's heart through the log seat they shared.

"Let's just say you owe me one now," Claire said, nudging the blonde with her shoulder. Liquid fire trailed down Alice's arm at the touch.

"Oh yeah?" She decided to play along. Screw Chris listening in, he'd know when to leave. "So I guess you forgot about the other day when I saved you're sorry ass from an undead."

Claire's face reddened a bit and she bit her lip in an embarrassed smile. "Trueee. So I guess I owe you, then." She swung her leg over the log to straddle the wooden seat, bringing her a few more inches closer to Alice. "I'll have to think of some way to make it up to you."

Alice's head swam with the implication, a thousand scenarios flashing behind her eyelids in a matter of seconds, and she forgot to breathe.

"Don't make any promises you're not going to keep, now." She told Claire, letting her know that their minds were in the same spot. Or so she hoped.

"I wouldn't worry so much if I were you."

Alice had to move away a bit, noticing that Claire's smell had coaxed the blonde a little too close for friendly proximity. She saw Claire frown slightly, and Alice motioned towards the silent Chris with her eyes.

Claire rolled her eyes as if to say "really? He'll get over it," then yawned and stretched her arms.

"Well, I'm off to bed. Chris, Mikey should be out soon for watch if you need to sleep."

"I'm alright for a little while. Goodnight, Claire." He gave her a hard to place look, and then she was walking toward the SUV, opening the back door, and climbing in. As soon as she was out of sight, Chris let out a huge yawn.

Alice raised an eyebrow at him. "Should be alright for a little while, huh?" She quoted him with a knowing smirk.

"I just want to keep an eye on her." He said, glancing towards the car. "She may act tough most of the time, but people forget how young she is. She can handle a lot, but one of these days she's going to break. So I want to keep an eye on her."

Alice nodded, and the two fell into silence again. She waited until Chris's head drooped down to his chest and he let out a few soft snores, then she went to find Mikey to let him know it was his turn for watch.

Then she made her way over to the SUV, and knocked lightly on the back door.


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

Kmart watched from the white van filled with sleeping women and the few children of the convoy. These were her charges for the night; orders given from Claire to sit with them and make sure they were safe. This was her first time being in charge of anything.

She had been given a gun; a rifle, heavy and awkward and loaded. Despite her young age, Kmart had proven to be a very good shot in close situations, more a product of adrenaline than talent, she thought. But if they wanted to give her a weapon, if _Claire_ wanted to give her a weapon, she wasn't going to refuse it. She would take any extra protection she could after the things she'd seen and heard about.

She shifted the rifle's weight in her lap, her hand never having left it since it was handed to her hours ago, and gazed over the faces of the sleeping passengers. Although not quite peaceful, they all looked comfortable. After all, who could sleep peacefully in this fucked up world Umbrella had created?

She envied the people's ability to sleep now. Kmart had been having a very hard time coaxing herself to fall asleep lately, especially with all the commotion caused by Claire and the two new arrivals.

She was somewhat familiar with Alice, and would consider them on the way to being friends, except for _the problem_. Well, she needed Alice to think they were friends, anyway, and maybe one day they would be. She could only hope.

Kmart remembered the first day Alice had come to the convoy, out in the desert, while they were trying to leave that gas station. One of the buses had gotten stuck in a sandstorm and Alice had saved them, passing out from exhaustion moments later, a combination of the effort of rescue and walking miles and miles through the sand dunes.

Kmart had sat with Alice until she woke up; to make sure she didn't try anything. She had seen what Alice did to the infected crows, and while grateful, she couldn't risk letting the newcomer hurt anyone, especially Claire.

So she had sat with the unconscious woman, and when she woke, Kmart had tried to be overwhelmingly friendly. She wasn't a generally bubbly person, anyone who had known her before the spill could have backed her up on that, but that life was over. Although everyone in the convoy thought she was the naïve, inexperienced, blonde teenager, it was because she had let them think that. Kmart had plans; plans to get what she wanted, and she never failed at that.

Claire opened the back door to the SUV to reveal Alice, hands in her pockets, head tilted down slightly as her wide eyes looked up at the red head.

"Your brother's sleeping on a log next to Mikey." Alice said with a smirk.

Claire let out a small laugh. "That's what he gets for trying to play hero and stay up for too long. He used to do the same thing when I was younger; go off to school, then home to check on me, then to work all night, then back to classes the next morning without a break."

"The man sounds like a machine."

"Machine's only run for so long before something breaks."

There was a pause in the conversation, Claire remembering how she had worried about her brother when he was missing, knowing that he would be getting as little sleep as possible because it would cut out time he could be looking for her. Chris worked best when he was well rested, and if he wasn't getting sleep, she was sure he would run into some sort of trouble.

They were as close as a brother and sister could be, and had always taken care of each other, but Claire had always felt a little guilty that she had taken so much of Chris's life away. His chance to be a normal college kid out in the world had been replaced with taking care of her, making sure she got to school and got good grades and had food to eat and a place to live. She had taken some of her brother's youth away, and she resented herself for it.

Alice snapped her fingers in front of Claire's face.

"Hey, Redfield! You in there?"

Claire blinked and forced a smile. "Yeah, sorry. Just thinking."

Alice's nose crinkled. "Thinking's bad; don't think. You make less fun mistakes that way."

"Hah, like what, you?"

"Are you saying I'm a mistake?" Alice asked with a fake gasp. She put her hand over her heart, feigning offense.

"A fun one." The red head clarified with a grin. She realized Alice had been standing outside the car for a while. "So do you want to come in or what?"

"I don't know, are your parents home?" Alice looked around Claire to the inside of the car as if she was actually checking. Claire rolled her eyes and kicked at the other woman playfully.

"Shut up and get in here." She took Alice by the wrists and pulled her inside.

Alice looked impressed. "Damn girl, you've been growing some arm muscles." She rubbed her wrists for emphasis. "You were just a scrawny little thing when I met you."

Claire smacked her on the shoulder but couldn't suppress a grin.

"Quiet you, or you'll see what these muscles can really do."

Alice's eyes gleamed in the dim yellow overhead lighting. "I'd love to see that."

Claire laughed. "I bet you would. Too bad there are people awake."

Alice kicked off her boots and shrugged out of her jacket, moving to rest her shoulders against the back of the forward facing bench seat of the SUV.

Claire raised a quizzical eyebrow at her. "What, you think you're staying here tonight?"

Alice tilted her head to look at the read head, the corners of her mouth turning up in a small smile. "I'm not?" She inched towards Claire.

"Uh-uh. I don't think so." Claire smirked mischievously, shaking her head.

"You know, you're kind of sexy when you're ordering people around."

Claire chewed her bottom lip. "You know, you're kind of sexy all the time."

"Hmph, you only like me for my looks."

Claire crawled closer. "Yup, and your disregard for directions. You're like the bad boy all the girls want, except you're fighting for the good side." She ran her hands up Alice's arms and clasped them around her neck.

"Hey, I'm nothing like a boy." Alice said, sliding her hands around Claire's waist.

Claire bit her lip, looking at the blonde with glazed-over eyes. "Show me."

Alice's face moved towards hers in a blur, needing only to be told once, and then her lips were on Claire's; soft and warm and better than she remembered. Claire leaned into the kiss, opening her mouth more and moving her hands to the sides of Alice's face.

Her fingers traced the blonde's features, following her jaw line with a thumb and pulling her chin so they were closer still.

She felt hands playing circles on her lower back, tensing her spine with a delicious tingling, then fingers toying with the hem of her shirt, brief warm fingertips flashing across her skin for too short a time.

"Off." She mumbled against Alice's lips, and the pressure left her mouth as the blonde pulled away for a second to lift the shirt up and over Claire's head in one quick motion.

She pressed herself against Alice, seeking warmth from the sudden cold on her skin, which was soon replaced with strong hands gliding up and down her back and sides.

Her mouth found Alice's neck, placing light kisses around the base first, and then moving up to bite gently at the warm skin.

Claire could feel as much as hear their heavy breathing. She threaded her fingers in Alice's short hair and moved her lips along the blonde's collar bone, scowling when she hit fabric. She pulled on the shirt roughly and sent it flying across the car, surprised and pleased to see that there was nothing else under it except more Alice.

"Heyyy…" Alice said, crossing her arms across her chest.

"What, you're going to get shy now?" Claire asked, exasperated. She threw a boot towards the front of the car that hit the controls on the dashboard and the overhead light suddenly blinked out. "There you go."

"You have amazing accuracy." Alice said, impressed yet again.

"And you have amazing boobs; stop talking now."

With that, Alice grabbed her around the waist and flipped her so she was lying on the makeshift bed. Claire reached up and guided Alice's head back down to her lips, tasting sweetness once more. The blonde's hands slid down her stomach gut-wrenchingly slow to pull at the button and zipper of her pants. She swallowed hard as she felt a hand go past the zipper, pressing slightly harder, then back up to her waistband.

Her pants were gone a second later, and she was surprised when she felt Alice's bare leg slip between hers. Alice's fingers ghosted up her arms to wrap around her wrists and pin them beside her head, her lips crushing to Claire's as her leg moved.

Claire breathed in Alice's scent and closed her eyes.

Kmart watched from the van. With everyone still asleep, she had not much to do but stare out the side window.

She watched as Claire joined Chris and Alice by the fire briefly, then leave. She watched as a few minutes later Alice followed her to the SUV. She watched as Claire opened the door, looking enthusiastic, and she watched as they both disappeared inside.

She saw the windows fog up from the heat inside against the cold wind outside the car, and she saw the light go out beyond the tinted windows of the SUV.

She knew what was happening in there, what was going on with Alice and Claire. She had suspected it before, days ago, but didn't think Alice's attraction was being reciprocated. Now she was sure.

Filled with anger and jealousy, her grip tightened on the rifle still in her hands, her knuckles turning a sickly white from the pressure.

This was unacceptable. This was infuriating.

Didn't they know? Kmart always got what she wanted; she made sure of it.

And what she wanted was Claire.


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

Yellow and pinkish light streamed in through the SUV's tinted windows. If it was a typical Spring Nevada day, Claire was sure she would have heard birds chirping loud enough to be irritating.

But nothing about this life was typical anymore. There were no singing birds, infection was alive and spreading, and even the sun seemed to cast a sickly tint in the sky.

Despite these things, Claire Redfield was extremely happy. She was protecting a large group of survivors rather successfully and had managed to finally, _finally_ reunite with her brother. Not to mention Alice.

She peeked under the heavy blanket covering them to make sure Alice was still there; that she hadn't dreamed everything last night.

Sure enough, Alice was still there, sleeping completely under the covers, her blonde hair covering her face in messy tangles, bare skin gleaming in the light.

Claire lightly traced the curve of her side, then placed a kiss in between her shoulder blades.

Alice inhaled deeply, turning over and furrowing her brow with closed eyes. "Wha…" She half said, still overcome with sleepiness. "Hey, why do you have clothes on?" She narrowed her eyes at Claire, who looked down at her own tank top.

"Because I _need_ these to cover up what _you_ did last night."

Alice gave a confused expression and Claire pulled up the back of her shirt to reveal long raking scratch marks, still red, running down her back.

Alice's mouth fell open and she smiled sheepishly. "Oops?"

Claire cleared her throat and held out her arms as well, dotted with light purple bruising up above her elbow and at her wrists.

Alice looked around the car, avoiding eye contact and whistling.

"Alice!" Claire yelped at her, exasperated.

"I… don't even know what to say." Alice said with a laugh, scratching the back of her head.

"Well, I just hope you have a scarf or something."

Alice stopped laughing and her face dropped, eyes widening. "What did you do?"

"Oh, nothing…"

Wincing, Alice popped up to the rear view mirror and rubbed at the bright red bite mark on her neck. "Fair enough." She said with a sigh.

Claire laughed. "It's not that bad. If you want I could give you another one. On the other side. So you can be symmetric…"

"Don't you dare!" Alice cried, automatically covering up her neck with her hand and throwing herself against the side of the car away from Claire.

"Oh, come onnn." Claire grinned, and in a second was straddling the blonde. "Let me see it."

"No way!"

"Pleaaase?" Claire leaned into Alice, kissing her lightly. Alice dropped her hands to Claire's waist and pulled her closer, letting out a small whimper when the red head broke the kiss. She gently traced the red mark on Alice's neck, then kissed it.

"See? I can be nice."

"Mmhm. For now." Alice said, smirking. She reached over and grabbed her shirt, slipping it over her head. "I see you have pants on too. Were there any marks down-"

"Oh yeah." Claire cut her off, nodding.

"Oops. Again."

"Don't worry. I'll get you back for those."

Alice climbed out of the SUV after Claire, sorely, and followed her over to the circle of logs surrounding the now quiet and lifeless fire pit. She sat down next to Chris, who was eating out of a label-less can, something that looked like a fruit mix.

"Morning." He said, glancing up at her.

"Hey." She said back. Chris did a double take and his eyes bulged, looking at her neck.

"Oh my god, who bit you?" He almost yelped.

"Shhh!" Her eyes danced over to Claire across the pit, and Chris's gaze followed.

"Claire?" He asked, astonished. "My little sister did that?"

Alice nodded, failing to hide a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Oh man. I really wish I didn't know that. Ugh, she's coming over here. What do I do?"

"You could try not acting like a spaz…" Alice said, nudging him with her elbow.

Claire made her way over to them and wedged herself in between them on the log. Alice figured she probably still thought Chris had a thing for her, in which case, this was going to be a _very_ interesting morning.

"Morning!" She said cheerily to her brother, ruffling his hair. He winced like a kid whose mom had just straightened his collar and smoothed his hair.

"Morning Claire. Sleep okay?" He asked, catching Alice's stare out of the corner of his eye.

"Actually, I, uh…" She looked down and tucked loose hair behind her ear. Alice cringed when she saw a small red line at the base of Claire's neck.

_Damn, I fucked that girl up!_ She thought. She would have to be more careful next time.

"I… didn't really get that much sleep." Claire finally finished.

_Smooth_, Alice thought sarcastically. Chris linked gazed with her and grinned.

"Oh no? Why not?"He asked innocently.

"Well, you see, I was…" Claire looked around at the other people nearby. They all seemed to be minding their own business; not paying attention to her conversation. Alice felt Claire's hand in hers and their fingers threaded together with ease. "Fuck it. Chris, I don't even know how to begin to tell you this, but…ugh! Since Alice came here not too long ago I've been… we've been…"

Chris burst out with laughter unexpectedly. Both women started and looked at him in bewilderment.

"Chris, what the hell?" Claire asked, a small amount of anger almost tangible in her voice amongst the hurt and confusion. "I was trying to tell you something important!"

"I-I'm sorry," He said, smiling, his face still red with laughter. He let out a few more chuckles and then cleared his throat, gaining control of himself again. "Sorry. But I know what you were going to tell me and you just looked so nervous…" His shoulders shook slightly again with his contained hysterics. "It's funny because you have no reason to be nervous. It's okay, Claire."

"What?" Claire asked, mortified, her voice sounding very small against the chatter of everyone else around them.

Chris pointed to their hands, still clasped together. "Well you're not very stealthy about it. Even if Alice hadn't told me, I'm sure I would have figured it out by-"

"Alice what?" Suddenly Alice's hand was quite free again, and Claire was looking at her with the rage from a thousand gods. Or zombies. She looked really, really pissed. Alice gulped visibly.

"Well, yeahhh," Chris said, a sort of half grimace stuck on his face now. "The other day in that lab she told me that she lo-"

"Whoaaa!" Alice practically shouted with panic. "Let's not go into too much detail, _Chris_." She forced a very strained smile and made a face akin to swallowing something too sour. Claire's eyes remained narrowed at the blonde.

"Claire?" Chris asked tentatively, tapping her on the shoulder. That seemed to snap her out of her cloud of anger and she turned to him.

"Wait, so, you're okay with this?" She asked. "With us?" She pointed a finger back and forth between herself and Alice.

"Yeah, of course. I mean, I wasn't at first, but as long as you're happy and healthy and safe I don't give a damn about who you're biting at three in the morning. As long as it's not zombie related."

Claire looked as if someone had just helped her out of concrete shoes dangling over the Hudson river. "You're an amazing brother."

Chris smiled. "I know it." He pulled his sister in for a hug. "Hey, is there a reason that blonde chick keeps staring at us?"

Kmart leaned against the white van, rifle slung over her shoulder on a strap, sunglasses on to hide her glaring eyes from the others. This morning she had watched both Claire and Alice exit the SUV, and had even heard Chris ask Alice who bit her. That was enough to send a small tidal wave of anger and revulsion through her, and she had clenched her fists together so hard there were open cuts from her nails.

"What's eating you, kid?" Carlos asked, reading her bad mood as he was walking by. She scowled.

"_That_." She said simply, nodding towards the two women. She watched as Claire slipped her hand into Alice's. _So freaking adorable, _she thought with malice.

"So you noticed it too, huh?" Carlos said, eyeing the women by the fire pit.

"How could you not? They're flaunting it in everyone's faces. Just look at that! They are sitting wayyy too close together."

"I'm with you, K. I am right there with you. I've known Alice for a while and this is just… it's not right."

Kmart took her sunglasses off and met Carlos's eyes. "Then I say we do something about it."


	14. Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

"I would sell my mother for a coke."

"That doesn't hold much credit considering our mother is dead." Chris said, glancing over at his sister, the bright sun reflecting sparkles off of his brow. Sometimes Claire forgot how much alike they looked.

"Well then I would sell my brother for coke." She re-phrased, sticking her tongue out.

"I didn't peg you for a druggy." Alice said.

"Hey, I was in college once! I experimented with things."

"Obviously!" Chris and Alice muttered simultaneously.

The three of them were laying in the cool shade of the SUV in the sand, Alice and Claire sprawled out so that their heads were touching, Chris resting on the other side of his sister, who reached a booted foot out to playfully kick his shin.

"I think I'm well past the experimentation phase, thank you." She said justifiably.

Alice raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what phase are you in now?" The ever-sneaking smirk appeared at the corner of the blonde's mouth. It made Claire want to smile in return instead of the scowling reaction it used to bring.

"One I'd rather not mention in front of my brother." Claire lifted her head to wink at Alice and Chris let out a groan.

"Oh get over it." Claire said, rolling her eyes. "It's not like you don't know what happens when everyone else isn't watching."

"And how I wish I didn't."

"Well then you might want to look away." Hidden from sight by the large block of SUV, Claire rolled to her right until she was on top of Alice, long red hair shadowing their faces like a private curtain.

"Hey." Alice said. Her voice was a rough whisper.

"Hey back." The two stared at each other for a long moment. Chris cleared his throat several times; obnoxiously.

"Are you going to do something or are you just proving a point?" Alice asked, gesturing to the woman above her.

"Well I was… but you just ruined the moment and now it's gone forever."

Alice sniggered and shook her head. She reached up quickly and fluidly, entrapping her fingers beneath bright red strands of hair to guide Claire's mouth down to her own. Claire sank into the unexpected kiss, her lips seeming to melt against Alice's fiery breath. Her heart hammered out Metallica drum beats as Alice's hands glided down her neck and bare arms, pausing to trace the outline of muscle holding her above the blonde.

Her hands wound up on Claire's waist, gently tugging to pull her down on top of Alice. Claire laughed internally. Even from the bottom, Alice was still dominating.

Claire let out a small sigh as the blonde deepened the kiss, the pressure of her lips making the red head's mouth open slightly against the softness of the others'.

"I'm still currently here, you know." Chris said.

Neither of them heard him.

Carlos watched Kmart's jaw clench and her hands ball into fists several times as she forced herself to look at the two women behind the car. He shook his head sadly and rested a firm hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

"Stop this." His voice seemed to shock her back to reality, and she turned to look at him, her expression fierce. "We'll take care of it, okay?"

"We'd better," She replied, crossing her arms in defiance of what she'd just seen. "Because no one else will."

"How about I put this plan into action right now?" He said, more to himself than a question to her. He jumped down from his seat atop the white van, landing on his feet as the hot sand splashed up his legs. He brushed off his pants and tilted his head both to the left and right with a satisfying crack.

He sauntered across the bare patch of ground to the black SUV, purposefully bumping into it with an audible strike to announce his arrival. Sure enough, as he rounded the corner he saw both Alice and Claire sitting in the sand, separated. If it weren't for their bright red faces and odd breathing patterns, he would have questioned that they had been doing anything at all.

"Morning, all." He said with perfectly executed fake pleasantness learned over the years.

"Uh, hey." Claire managed to cough out. Chris shook his head with disappointment at her lack of ability to conceal and Alice covered her mouth with the back of her hand to hide a grin.

"Claire, I have a sort of… proposition for you." He said, ignoring the strange behavior in favor of getting things done quickly.

"Oh. Sure, go ahead." She said, standing up and brushing the sand off of her pants. The other two followed her lead and stood as well. _Useless minions_, he thought, and cleared his throat.

"I know you're aware that the infected are drawn to fresh food; living humans roaming around the desert in large groups, for instance, and I know that's why you keep the convoy moving around so much. It's the best way to avoid constant confrontations with them and maybe eventually even them overpowering us if enough came at once.

You will continue to move these people as it is in their best interest for their safety, until another option comes along. What I'm suggesting is that we present ourselves with another, better option."

Claire's brow creased in confusion and she crossed her arms, but Carlos could tell her interest was piqued. She was intrigued. "What option?"

"I'm thinking we find these people semi-permanent housing; somewhere they can lie low for a few weeks without having to worry about being out in the open or being attacked at any given minute. Four walls and a roof may not sound like much, but when you're in them they sure provide you with a sense of safety. I know that's what you've been trying to give them here all along."

Claire stood silent for a moment, nodding, thinking it over.

"Seems like there would be a lot of holes in that plan." Chris said, speaking up before his sister had finished mulling over the idea. "There would need to be constant surveillance on whatever building they were kept in, and it would need to be somewhat isolated, otherwise you can bet there will already be infected roaming around. And where one or two of those wander, more are sure to follow.

Plus there's the food situation; people will need to leave to go get supplies every once in a while, and we'll need to make sure the inside environment is safe to build and contain a fire…"

"I know it seems like a lot," Carlos cut him off with a sharp hand in the air. Chris scowled in response. "But it can all be worked out. We already send out scavenging teams for food and supplies, so that shouldn't be an issue, nor should the surveillance. Most buildings do have rooftops and access to them, no?"

"It is a lot to think about." Claire said, glancing between Carlos's eager face and Chris's still doubtful expression. "Maybe if we just go out and look, see if there are any isolated buildings that could work for this…"

"Right, exactly!" Carlos said, the threads of his plan already weaving together in his mind. "We can see if such a place already exists, and then play it by ear."

"It would have to be in close proximity." Alice chimed in. "We can't afford to waste a lot of gas driving far distances just for a scouting mission that might not even come to anything."

"But it might lead to something great." Claire said, turning to look at the blonde, her young eyes full of enthusiasm and determination. "I say we head out now."

Chris and Alice exchanged hesitant glances, both wary of the not fully formed plan of action Claire was already so willing to jump into. They would still need some convincing. That was fine; Carlos was willing to play the secret politician for a little while, answer whatever questions their over-working minds could throw at him.

"Just a scouting first," He said to them, making his eyes as sincere as could muster. "Then if we find anything, then we can work out all of the kinks and decide if it's really the best decision for the group."

That had done it. Chris nodded somberly, taking a step towards his sister.

"I'll go get some supplies ready." He said, taking point as was his nature.

Claire turned to Alice again. "We should head out as soon as possible if we want to cover a lot of ground before it starts to get dark, and there's really no use going if there's no light to-"

"Actually," Carlos cut her off mid-sentence, an apologetic look plastered on his darkened features. "I think it may be a good idea for you to take someone else with you this time, Claire." He watched her expression turn doubtful and wary. He sensed he was losing her. "You know, some of the younger people who can actually fight and hold their own in this group, they might need some training for the future. I think it might be a good way for them to get some experience outside the camp if you took one of them this time."

Claire raised an eyebrow. "Who did you have in mind?"

Carlos crossed his fingers mentally. "Kmart. She's a pretty good shot and a quick thinker already, but I think you could help her direct some of her nervous energy to something useful and productive. She could learn a lot from you, Claire."

He could see that the compliment had sold her, and she nodded.

"Alright. Let her know I'm leaving in half an hour. And tell her to load her gun."

Carlos walked away quickly to find the teenager, no doubt lurking somewhere close within earshot of the entire conversation. He smiled when his back was turned, proud of his superfluous acting job and ability to convince the others of what he needed from them.

It was a shame he hadn't honed into these skills earlier, he thought. He could be running the whole show by now.


	15. Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Kmart listened to the conversation intently, nodding along as Carlos planted ideas and reasoning into the other's heads. He was a good orator, she'd give him that. The two women were buying it, and what really mattered was that Claire decided to pursue Carlos's request. The older guy, Chris, didn't seem as easily convinced and remained skeptical, but she wasn't concerned with him right now. If all went according to plan, _her_ plan, Alice would be out of the picture much sooner than later.

Hearing Claire agree to go in search of a suitable building right away, Kmart silently thanked Carlos for his help and marveled at his persuasive abilities. It was a nice surprise, him willing to help her like this, but when all was said and done she was still the backbone and mastermind of this; not him. He was just another puppet she could string along until he either became useless or got brave and decided to go for what he ultimately wanted.

Kmart knew why he wanted to help her. It wasn't because he cared about her, or because he was a generally kind-hearted person. It was because, like Kmart, he wanted something he couldn't have. Well, couldn't have until certain obstacles and people were out of the way. Kmart's plan was a win/win situation for the two of them.

She just hoped he wouldn't get too greedy later on. She really didn't want to have to kill Carlos.

Alice snuck up behind Claire quietly, watching the red head from a slight distance. She was hurriedly shoving things into a backpack from the side door of the SUV; flashlight, handguns, boxes of ammo, water bottles, and of course cigarettes.

Alice smiled to herself and walked up behind the other woman, wrapping her arms around her waist and pulling her away from her packing. She felt Claire instantly relax into her arms and lean back, resting the back of her head on Alice's shoulder.

"So you're leaving me, huh?" The blonde said, swaying them back and forth lightly.

Claire sighed. "Not my idea, believe me. But I have to find some way to make Carlos happy before he goes running his mouth in a giant ego trip. He wants Kmart to learn something from me, which really, isn't a bad idea. It's just inconvenient."

Alice bent foreword, kissing Claire's neck in two places. "So tell him to fuck off," She said simply. "Take me instead. We'll have more fun." She loosened her grip and spun Claire around so they were facing each other. Her hands resumed their rightful place around Claire's waist and they were swaying again, almost dancing.

"Trust me," Alice said with a wink.

Claire's arms wove around Alice's neck in a familiar embrace and she pressed her lips lightly to the blonde's, pulling away after a few seconds with a sad smile.

"You know I want to," She said, trying to ignore Alice's pout. "But I have to take the kid this time."

"I hate the kid," Alice grumbled, staring at the ground pathetically.

"Don't worry. I'll be back before you know it." Alice held her unhappy grimace.

Claire started to pull away, but Alice grabbed her arm, stopping her.

"I have to go." Claire said, tilting her head slightly with a smile.

"You can't go yetttt." Alice whined, entwining her fingers through the red head's belt loops. "What if something happens to you? Then I'll have only seen you naked once. That's just not fair." She drew Claire closer, meeting her green eyes with a wounded puppy look.

Claire tried to look offended but couldn't help smiling. She pried Alice's fingers from her belt loops, freeing herself, but the blonde just interlaced their fingers together, trapping Claire once more. Claire sighed, slightly annoyed but enjoying the moment nonetheless.

"You'll have to let me go eventually," She reasoned, moving her face closer towards Alice. "Or Carlos will come looking."

The blonde rolled her eyes and brought her forehead closer to lightly touch Claire's. "Let him come looking. We can take him."

"But then I would have one less person to help keep watch at night," Claire mumbled against her lips.

"Well you have me now, too, remember?" Claire's lips grazed across Alice's, hands still held to her sides.

"Mmm, I had other plans for you at night." The red head was forced into submissive silence as Alice's mouth pressed against hers; warm and delicious and unyielding. Her head swam with the same dizzying sweetness that Claire always caused. She pressed closer, freeing one of Claire's hands from her own as she brought it up to cup the side of her face.

She felt the coolness of a shadow settle over them and looked up to see Carlos, arms crossed in that aggravating way he had. Alice decided she didn't care if he was there, her lips returning to Claire's without hesitation.

"So is this how you prepare yourself to leave?" She heard him ask, obviously addressing Claire.

The red head pulled back from the kiss only slightly. "Go away, Carlos. Come back in five minutes. Or ten. Come back in ten minutes." Alice could feel hot breath on her face when Claire spoke, her green eyes never leaving Alice's.

"This is ridiculous. Kmart's ready to go. She's on her way over here right now. You have maybe thirty seconds."

Neither of the women pulled away from each other, and after a few seconds Alice heard Carlos scowl and walk away. Claire let out a soft whimper as Alice broke the kiss, smiling sadly and moving away from Claire.

"Be safe, okay?" She said to Claire, walking backwards slowly.

"Yeah, you too. Do me a favor and make sure Chris doesn't get into trouble while I'm gone."

Alice let out a laugh. "Sure." She turned her back away from Claire, then stopped as she passed Kmart. "Oh, and Claire? If she touches you, I'll kill her." She joked, winking at the teenager, who rolled her eyes and playfully smacked Alice's arm as she walked by.

She watched Kmart climb into the passenger's side of the SUV, and caught a glimpse of something on the young girl's face. Anger, or resentment maybe?

_No, it must have just been the sun playing tricks,_ she thought, and watched the SUV pull out onto the road, feeling instantly bored and lonely.


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Chris Redfield sat in the cool sand, silently kicking at the shifting top soil as the dim night sky made its first appearance. The twilit grains moved beneath his boot, flowing over each other in gray rivulets, the fast approaching moon casting a pale blue shimmer on them.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips. He was concerned about Claire.

He had never liked her going off on her own, even when they were younger and she would go to a friend's house or the store. There was always the possibility that something would happen. Like the something that had happened to their parents.

Chris knew it was silly; Claire wasn't even alone this time. She had gone off with Kmart, who, even though Chris got a funny vibe off of, had known his sister for a while, and Carlos had said that she was a competent girl.

But that didn't mean things couldn't still happen. Had it been a few years ago he probably wouldn't have minded as much. Now, though… now the world was a whole different place. It was bad out there; full of nasty people and horrible creations, and his sister had a habit of going after things she shouldn't mess with. Like Umbrella.

So Chris sat in the sand, worrying. He let his lithe fingers nervously trace meaningless symbols between the granules, not even noticing Alice sit down next to him until she spoke.

"Don't be such a worry wart." She said.

Chris started, whipping his head around to face the newcomer. His face flushed from embarrassment.

"I'm not worrying." He lied. Somehow the denial spurred on even more mental images of Claire in trouble. He shook his head to clear them and ran a hand over his short cropped hair.

"Okay, Mr. Tough Guy." Alice mocked, flashing him a dazzling smile as he scowled back at her.

"I can't help it, you know?" He said, turning his attention back to the lines in the sand between his feet. "You're not the slightest bit worried?"

"Sure, a little bit," She admitted. "But I've seen your sister in action and, let me tell you, she won't be anywhere near helpless if she gets into trouble. She can handle herself."

Chris nodded. He trusted Alice's judgment for some reason, probably because he knew she cared about his sister and wouldn't let her do anything to endanger herself.

"Yeah, well, I wish you would have gone with her instead of that kid." He rose, brushing the sand from his cargo pants, and began building the fire for the night. Alice joined him, piling the wood in the center of the circle of rocks as Chris gathered the flint and tinder. The blonde held out a zippo lighter, the loose flame jumping beneath the contact of flammable substances.

"Yeah, I wish I would have gone with her, too." Alice said, a faraway look in her green-blue eyes.

Chris opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by a blood curdling scream. It was close. Someone in the camp.

Both Alice and Chris jumped to attention, the blonde already off and running. Chris followed her a second later, a firm hand already gripping the butt of his gun and pulling it smoothly from the holster as his boots sank into the grinding sand.

It didn't take long to find the source of the scream.

Not too far away from a large yellow Hummer, a lone zombie hunched on all fours on the ground. Stringy black hair dangled in front of its misshapen face like charcoaled worms. Its clothes were tattered and half hanging off its body, sickly white bone showing through the left armhole instead of a flesh-covered limb. Its peeling hands grabbed desperately for something trapped underneath of it.

Chris's stomach sank like lead when he got close enough to see; see that the thing trapped under the infected was a person. One of the women from the convoy.

He didn't hesitate as he brought his handgun upwards, taking careful aim while still moving, and _poppop_, the thing went down. Two clean bullet holes glared red in the zombie's skull, and directly beneath the holes, two blank, lifeless eyes stared back at the shooter. Chris felt no sadness for the being.

He pressed forward, reaching a hand out to help the woman on the ground up, and began to ask her if she was alright. Instead he felt a hand grip the top of his shoulder, stopping his arm's descent, and he looked over to see Alice.

Her face was sorrowful yet resolute as she nodded towards the woman in silence. Chris looked down and felt a cold rock drop in the pit of his stomach.

The woman hadn't even noticed him; was too busy gripping the giant bite mark in the stomach, the blood seeping out through her pale white fingers. There was no saving her.

"Too late." Alice said softly.

"What do we do?" He asked, more to himself than to her.

"If we leave her like this she'll turn into one of them. But if we… ease the suffering…" Her voice trailed off. Everyone there knew the options.

"I can't do it." Chris said flatly. "I can't shoot a living person. Not until she's one of them."

"She's not living; she's dying now." Carlos had appeared on the other side of Chris. His voice seemed a little emotionless to Chris as he looked down at the woman, still grabbing her wound. Her eyebrows were knit tightly together, eyes shut, teeth clenched in pain.

"I'll do it." Carlos volunteered, already drawing his gun.

"Wait, don't!" Alice shouted. Her voice was lost in the overpowering explosion of gunfire from Carlos's hand. Too late. "She didn't even get to say anything!"

"Given the chance, she wouldn't have been able to even speak." Carlos reasoned. "She was in too much pain. The virus was already in her bloodstream. She would have bitten you while you waited for her last words."

He picked up the body, turned, and walked away from the large group of on-lookers; a dozen people who had just witnessed him kill a dying woman. Chris watched him step up to the now blazing fire and toss the body into the flames.

Chris turned his head and looked away.

* * *

They had found it; the perfect building. Claire was almost giddy with excitement and anticipation. She loved the exhilarating feeling of knowing that the risk she just took had paid off in a good way.

She and Kmart stood on the roof of what seemed to be some sort of manufacturing building. Inside they had found tons of machines, the fixtures inside them holding various metals carved into different products by the drills in the machines.

Overwhelmed by the sheer spaciousness of the place, it had taken Claire a few minutes to realize that with a little bit of time and planning, the convoy could use this building. Not just for temporary housing, but for something much more critical: bullet production.

The machines were already there, and even though there was no electricity, there was a generator in the basement that could power two or three of the machines at once. There was stock metal lying all over the place; aluminum, steel, copper… everything they needed was already there. All they would have to do was design a program for the bullets, telling the tools where and how to cut the material.

Curious, Claire had checked out one of the laptop computers, miraculously one that still had battery life. The programming didn't look too hard, and they would definitely have time to figure it out with Mikey's computer skills to help them.

It was too good to be true.

"What do you think about staying here for the night?" Claire asked, the wind blowing softly against her grinning face on the rooftop. "I'd feel a lot better travelling when the sun's up. We don't know this area too well."

"That's probably best. The dark freaks me out anyway." Kmart said, shifting her rifle's sling to the other shoulder. Claire wondered if she ever put that thing down.

"Alright then. It would be safest to sleep here on the roof. That way if anything comes at us we can see from all angles. Easier to pick off targets from this height, too."

Kmart nodded, finally shrugging off her weapon and the book bag she wore. Claire took off her own pack and unzipped it, fishing out the small blanket she had grabbed just in case. She was glad she had thought of it now; it wasn't too chilly outside, but she didn't really want to risk freezing to death in her sleep. The desert had a way of changing temperatures dramatically in short time periods.

Kmart too pulled a blanket from her bag, and the two set up their makeshift beds in silence. When they were done, Claire turned off her flashlight and settled down onto her side, grinning in the dark at the discovery they'd made.

Her last thought was that she didn't know how she would fall asleep with all the excitement and nervous energy in her, and how she couldn't wait to tell Alice all about it. Then she slipped from consciousness, falling into a light but comfortable sleep next to Kmart.


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Alice stood by the fire, the now soiled fire that had eaten away at the human body tossed on it hours ago. She had watched, the hot flames licking away at the woman's skin, cleansing, boiling her still blood, infected or not; watched as Carlos had walked away without a care.

A few weeks ago she would have thought her friend was just being cold, putting on a face to be able to do what no one else around him could. She wouldn't have been the one to get rid of the body, so he had had to step up and do it. He was great at putting up fronts. It was part of what made him such a reliable and useful person to have around.

A few weeks ago she would have thought this.

Lately, though… lately Alice got the feeling Carlos was indeed putting on a front, but for the wrong reasons. He had some motivation, some hidden goal that no one knew about, and he was determined to lie and conceal to get whatever it was. She knew this, but she didn't want to just jump forward and call him on it; not until she knew what it was he was after.

They had been such good friends once. She felt that if she could just figure him out she could somehow help him, before he did something drastic and blew his good standing with Claire and the rest of the convoy.

As if on cue, she sensed someone standing over her, a Carlos-shaped shadow cast by the fire on the sand to her right, it's shadow-head ending in the high flames.

"Troubled thinking?" He asked. His voice was a vast rumble in the dead night.

Alice tilted her head up to him and tried to press out a smile.

"Not so much," She lied. "What about you?"

He paused before answering, his eyes lost in a distant land.

"I don't do much thinking that isn't troubled these days. But today, my focus lies on the convoy; it's safety. We all want what's best for these people. We want to keep them from harm. We want to see them live, to prosper and grow and smile and not have to worry about things like if they're going to have their faces chewed off in the middle of the night.

And now I'm certain that the only way to give them any small bit of security is to move them. They need the basic feeling of four walls around them to feel like they don't have to watch their backs every second they're awake, when they're sleeping, even."

It was a nice little speech.

Alice listened intently, finding that she actually agreed with Carlos. She nodded silently, blue eyes meeting his concentrated dark brown stare.

"So you agree." He said, finding his answer in her silence as her eyes dropped to the ground again. "I could see it days ago, and you can see it now. The problem is I saw it before Claire did."

Alice's head snapped up quickly at the mention of Claire's name, and suddenly she had the feeling she wasn't going to like what else Carlos had to say.

"You see," He continued. "It seems to me that Claire has recently developed a problem. She used to be aware of every little thing within the convoy. She knew all the small intricacies of the relationships and she knew how to deal with every small nuance of a problem here.

But lately her focus has been less than great; she's been distracted, missing vital things that she normally would have taken point on. Like this recent attack. She has been so wrapped up in her own world that she failed to see we had been in one place for too long, and a woman died because of this neglect. It's not right."

Alice's jaw had clenched tightly shut while she listened to Carlos, her fists balled up in anger and her mouth formed a tight thin line. She reminded herself to breathe in and met his eyes again.

"So you think I'm this huge _distraction_." She said, putting extra emphasis on her new title.

Carlos nodded briskly, no apology in his stare. "Yes, I do. Think about it, Alice. She was even so worried about you when the two of you went out fighting that she managed to get herself infected."

Alice started. The only ones who were supposed to know about that were herself, Claire, and Chris. Maybe she had underestimated Carlos.

"Right. And who was it that found the antivirus? Oh right, that was Chris and I. I don't know how you found out about her being infected, but what that tells me is that you knew she was sick and didn't try to help. What were you going to do, Carlos, wait until it took complete hold of her and then shoot her in the head? Toss her in the fire like earlier?"

She saw Carlos's hard eyes narrow slightly and knew that she had it right. His motives for everything were becoming startlingly clear now. He wasn't the person she thought he was; no longer the close friend she had known back in Raccoon city.

"All I'm saying is that Claire leads this convoy." He said, the menace in his face dimmed significantly. "She was born to lead, and she's excellent at it, given the right amount of concentration. She was doing just fine until you showed up. Now she's running off with you every few days, neglecting her watch duties, ignoring the people she loves to protect.

The way I see it, either you need to leave us, or new leadership needs to be enforced. Claire is what's best for this convoy, and I would hate to see her have to be forced to step down."

"You want me to leave…" Alice said slowly, puzzle pieces bit by bit clicking into place in her mind.

Carlos sighed heavily. "She won't back down easily. She's very attached to you and you've grown very close very quickly. She would try to fight it if you told her you were leaving. I think the best way to go about this is just for you to leave now, while she's away. Claire has already had to deal with enough goodbyes. You should give her a pass on this one."

Alice stared at him in astonishment. He had already decided she was going to go quietly in the night without a word.

Wrong.

"I'm sorry, Carlos, but you're wrong. You think I'm distracting Claire, making her unfocused and lazy? Having me around has done nothing but make her more focused. She's more determined now than ever to protect the people around her because now it's including people that she loves.  
Even if she has lost a little bit of focus, Chris and I are both here, and we can pick up more than enough of the slack. You know this.

The thing is, you want me gone so that Claire will break down. And when Claire breaks down, Chris, you're only competition, will spend his every waking moment helping her. That leaves the door wide open for you to come in and take over leading the convoy.

Then you'll have it all, right? You get the power, you get the adoration for saving the people from an unstable person in charge, and you get the renown for coming p with great ideas on a daily basis that no one is going to dispute because, hey, you know what you're doing, right?

It sounds like a great plan. The only problem is, you assumed I would be leaving quietly. I'm not going anywhere." She ground the heel of her boot into the sand and crossed her arms, staring Carlos down defiantly.

* * *

Carlos felt red hot hatred and rage boiling within his veins as he stared back at the one roadblock in his plan. He took in a long deep breath, closing his eyes as he exhaled and opening them again when his anger had passed.

If she didn't want t leave, that was fine. He could make her disappear.

He put on a very convincing sad smile and nodded.

"Okay, Alice. You caught me. Just do me a favor. Think about how much you really care about Claire. Think about the danger you put her in every day, when you know Umbrella is trying to find you. You can only hide for so long before they do."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm not leaving, Carlos. Right now, I'm going to find Chris. I think he'll find all of this really interesting."

Carlos waited, saw her turn away from him, begin to walk away, and then leapt, the butt of his gun connecting hard with the back of her head as his feet hit the ground behind her.

He looked around quickly, and, seeing no one, picked up the unconscious woman and hurried away from camp.

His feet flew, sliding on the dry sand as he tried to maintain a decent speed, glancing at his surroundings, not here, not here, but- oh!

Just up ahead, a large dark outcropping in the wall of mountain, the cave he had found a while back when doing some reconnaissance.

He hurried towards the cave, stumbling in the dark with the weight of Alice, and dropped her in the sand as he reached for his flashlight. He covered the wide spread of the beam with his shirt and peered into the cave. Nothing unusual.

He set the flashlight down inside the small opening of the mountain face, pointing towards the back wall, and dragged the body inside, his boots making hard sounds on the cave floor that his ears weren't used to hearing after months and months of sand.

Carlos worked quickly, tying Alice's limp hands together, then her feet, duct tape over the mouth, around the knotted ropes he had just fitted her with for extra reinforcement, then fully around the arms, torso, and legs. He drove an old nail into a soft spot in the floor with one tremendous blow from his boot heel, then laced the rope around it to keep her in place.

"That should do it," He whispered. Without looking back, he turned and headed back to the camp.


	18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

The sun was rising high in the sky already when Kmart woke, casting streaks of orange and pink light across the bleak stretches of sand below the rooftop.

She yawned and tried to blink the sleep out of her eyes. It took her a few moments to realize where she was, to remember that she and Claire had gone off in search of a secure building, and that yes, they had found one.

She rolled over on her makeshift bed and found herself facing Claire. The redhead was still sleeping, mouth slightly parted and emitting small whistling snores. Her arm was still cradling her gun, like a child who had fallen asleep clutching a cherished stuffed animal.

Kmart smiled to herself. Most people hugged pillows for comfort when they slept. Claire held guns.

Their blankets were spread out close to each other, maybe a foot and a half of extra space between the fabrics. Kmart rolled over once again and now she was on the edge of hers. She watched the sleeping woman with curiosity.

What would she feel like, when Kmart had her, she wondered. She probably had amazingly soft skin, and warm. Warmer than Alice's cold skin. Kmart remembered how cold the other woman had felt when her fingers brushed Alice's wrist putting the bracelet on her that first day. She didn't understand how Claire could find comfort in someone so cold.

She scooted closer still as Claire turned over in her sleep, throwing a lazy arm across her forehead. She faced away from Kmart now.

The teenager placed both palms on the ground and inch by inch crawled up next to the redhead until she was close enough to feel the heat radiating off Claire's skin. Her bare arms were almost sparkling in the morning sun, milky white, and small freckled speckled the white porcelain.

Kmart held back in impulse to run a hand over her arm, stopped herself from bringing her face down next to Claire's. It was wrong to try to force someone to want you, to give unwanted affection while they were unaware. Claire had to want it first, she told herself.

But she was right there.

Kmart held her breath as she reached forward, a shaky hand gently moving a strand of hair out of Claire's face.

_Don't do this,_ she told herself. _Don't ruin it before it even begins…_

But her mind wasn't listening.

Her hand glided smoothly down Claire's arm and over her side, resting lightly on her stomach. The redhead grunted in her sleep, her face warping into a disturbed and confused expression with eyes closed.

_You know this isn't Alice's touch, don't you. How under her spell are you? Well, you'll learn to know my touch that well someday soon._

Claire moved again in her sleep, stretching so that a small part of her stomach was exposed. Kmart swallowed and stared at Claire's face, wondering how deep of a sleeper she was.

It was too enticing.

Kmart's hand moved slowly down, sliding under the thin fabric of the redhead's shirt, feeling the warmth from her skin. She glanced back to Claire's face, wanting to see her unconscious expression, but- uhoh.

Claire's eyes were open. Open and staring fiercely into Kmart's own.

"Get. Off." She breathed, her furiously quiet voice cutting the silent morning.

Kmart was frozen with fear and shock. She heard a sharp click so close to her ear, so close, and out of the corner of her eye saw Claire's glock pointed at her temple, no longer being cuddled by a sleeping woman. Now it was a weapon meant to kill her.

Her hand moved off Claire, and she quickly crab-walked away, falling over herself as she tried to put distance between herself and the gun.

"You have five seconds to talk." Claire said, her voice maintaining its low yet frightening tone. "Go."

Kmart was silent.

"One." The gun re-focused between her eyes.

"Two." Claire brought her left hand up for extra support under the glock.

"Three."

"I… I-"

"Four." The hammer pulled back on the gun, reading the bullets.

"Fi-"

"I love you!" She blurted. That was all she could think of to say. It was wrong, she had had a whole speech planned out, knew the perfect words to say that would make Claire understand, to reciprocate the feeling. But those words were now long forgotten, dying on the tongue of a scared little teenage girl.

Claire's eyes were narrowed, thin slits guarding deep green anger.

"Explain."

Kmart shook her head, open mouth working like a fish's to come up with the words.

"What is there to explain? I love you, I-I want you to be with me, I want to make you happy and you're with Alice and you're pointing a gun at me and I don't know how to make you understand…" She trailed off, ashamed of her jumbled explanation. Word salad.

Claire lowered her gun. It was still pointed at Kmart, but it was lowered. Progress.

"So you… you what?" Claire asked, disgust painting a mask over her beautiful features. "You… molest me in my sleep? How long have you been… What is wrong with you?"

"I just wanted to-"

"Stop." She shook her head, a dozen emotions flooding over her face. "Get up. Get your shit. We're going back. Now."

Kmart felt water crowd her eyes. She tried to blink it away.

"NOW!" Claire snapped, and Kmart scrambled to shove her things back in her backpack. She reached for the rifle, but a white hot pain seared through her hand as Claire slammed the barrel of the glock down on it, stopping her.

"You're mad if you think I'm letting you carry that." Claire said, snatching up the gun and slinging it over her shoulder. "Move."

Kmart stood shakily and walked for the door to the building. It was all wrong. She had ruined it. It had been an almost flawless plan between her and Carlos and she had jumped the gun and fucked it up.

She'd ruined everything.

* * *

Chris scanned the crowd of people scattered along the sand, the people who were building fires and rolling up blankets, bringing food out of the cars and talking with each other.

Nowhere was he able to find Alice. Claire would be coming back today and he'd wanted to talk to her about what they would do if she had actually found anything. Chris was a man who relied on plans; he'd had to do too much thinking on his feet lately, and he was getting sick of it. Plans were good. They helped keep things in order, gave people a sense of calm.

"Carlos!" He called out, seeing the man walking away from the camp. Hearing his name, he turned and headed back.

"Morning, Chris." He said, giving a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Something you need?"

"Yeah, I'm looking for Alice. You seen her anywhere yet?"

Carlos almost winced, like he'd been kicked under the table and didn't want the other people to notice.

"I'll take that as a yes. What's up?" He asked, his eyes turning cautious.

"You're not going to like it." Carlos said with a sigh. Chris crossed his arms in response, daring the other man to not tell him. "Something happened last night."

Chris's hand immediately went to his gun, and Carlos shook his head.

"No nonono. Nothing like that; everyone's fine. It just that… Alice sort of went off in a craze." Chris knotted his brow down in confusion and Carlos continued. "I found her gathering up all of her things, muttering to herself, babbling about how she was no good for anyone and she just had to leave."

"What?" Chris was astonished. No way would Alice ever do that. He had only known her for a few days, but from what he did know, she was a very dedicated person. And then there was Claire.

"She took off. Just bolted out of the camp without a word to anyone."

"Why didn't you stop her?" Chris almost yelled, exasperated.

"She looked crazed, Chris, and I don't know if you've noticed, but she's incredibly strong. She could have killed me if I tried to stop her. She's not someone you try to get in the way of."

Chris eyed Carlos, hard, trying to read into him. The guy looked weird, like he was too proud of himself for something. Like he was gloating internally. Like he got the jump on someone who was incredibly strong and didn't let people get in their way.

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?" Carlos asked, alarmed.

"I said, bullshit." He tilted his head and stepped closer to Carlos in threatening manner, hand on his gun again. "You did something to Alice. And you're going to tell me where she is. Now."

"Chris, I- I don't know what you're talking about." He laughed at Carlos's pathetic attempt at feigning innocence.

"Give it up, Carlos. Tell me what you did right now or I'll hit you so hard your brains will be all over the ground just in time for the zombie's breakfast."

Carlos sneered evilly at him.

"One," Chris began to count, his voice a low growl. "Two. Three. Four. Five."

He smirked.

"Time's up, bitch." Chris tightened his hand into a fist and pulled back, ready to launch Carlos's head into the sand, but was stopped by the sound of a rumbling car engine. "Ha, now you're in for it. I was just going to hurt you, but my sister… she's another story."

Chris grinned at Carlos as they watched Claire and Kmart emerge from the vehicle. Chris's smile faltered, though, when he saw that Kmart's face was puffy and red, like she had been crying.

And Claire looked pissed.


	19. Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

Claire stomped across the sand and headed straight for Chris and Carlos, tiny grains scattering into the air beneath her feet. She pulled Kmart along by one arm, careful to keep as much distance as she could. It was like the young girl now had some disease Claire didn't want to catch.

Kmart resisted weakly and stumbled frequently trying to keep up with Claire's pace, but the redhead kept pulling her forward roughly until she reached the two men. She noted that both of them looked about as happy as she felt.

Chris wore a semi-sadistic and grim smile, more of a snarl on his face than Claire usually saw from her brother. But she knew that no matter how sweet and gentle he may have seemed to her, if someone got on Chris's bad side they were in for a rough couple of days. It looked like Carlos would be.

"Man, I hope you have a better story than I do." Chris said as Claire yanked Kmart to a halt in front of them.

"Well unless Carlos here was running his hands up your shirt while you slept, I think I win." She scowled.

"Claire, please," Kmart whispered to the other woman, her voice wavering with the force of unshed tears. "You have to believe me, I didn't-"

"Shut up." Claire barked at her. The teenager snapped her mouth shut and shrunk back visibly.

"Wait, what?" Chris asked, his sister's words finally sinking in. "You did what?" He shouted at Kmart.

"N-no, it's not like that…" She cried out, her face contorted in sorrow and fear.

"No, actually, it's exactly like that, Kmart." Clare said. Her mouth was pressed closed in a tight line and she now let go of the girl to cross her arms. "And _you_."

Carlos started as Claire narrowed her eyes at him. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. You were the one who told me to take mini-perv with me instead of Alice. Did you know? Did she tell you want she was planning on doing? You were trying to help her, weren't you? What is your problem, Carlos?"

"Dude, you're more fucked up than I thought." Chris muttered to the other man, who looked very taken aback at Claire's accusation.

"Where is Alice anyway?" Claire asked. She saw Chris swallow hard and thought she saw a tiny smirk ghost across Carlos's face.

"That's a great question." Chris said. He nodded as he turned to look at Carlos. "I think our friend here was just about to tell us the _real_ story about where she went."

"What do you mean where she went?" Claire asked. She was suddenly very nervous.

"Well you see, Alice had a little problem with following directions," Carlos said, lifting his head slightly. "She didn't want to do what she was told, what would have been best for the group. So she had to go."

Claire stepped forward, gritting her teeth as she spoke. "What. Did. You. Do?"

Carlos grinned maliciously. "It's not so much what I did as what she wouldn't do." He paused as anger and fear slowly wound through Claire, slightly reddening her vision. "She's very attached to you, you know. She just didn't want to leave."

"Where is she?" Chris growled, moving so that he was next to his sister. The two appeared a fearsome pair, their eyes matching in resenting betrayal and fury.

"You want to see Alice?" Carlos asked. Claire didn't like the look that swiftly materialized on his face. She saw him nod discreetly and briskly, his eyes focused on something behind her.

She realized too late that both she and Chris had turned their backs on Kmart, and heard her brother's muffled gasp as the girl whacked him on the back of the head with a thick thud. He fell to the sand, unconscious.

Claire whipped her head around, red hair temporarily blocking her vision, and caught sight of Kmart backing up, anticipating retaliation from the older woman. She wasn't wrong.

Claire's nostrils flared in anger as she leapt forward, her fist missing Kmart's check by an inch as she suddenly found herself staring up at the sky, her back in the sand.

Carlos appeared above her, gun in hand held by the barrel. He placed one booted foot on her stomach, holding her hostage to the ground.

"Sorry Claire," He said, no trace of remorse in his voice despite his apology. "You don't get to play hero today. But you'll get to see Alice soon enough."

Then the butt of Carlos's gun was flying at her face, and a sharp pain exploded through her right temple before the world went black.

Kmart stared down at the two unconscious Redfield siblings.

"You didn't think this through at all, did you?" She said to Carlos with a sigh. _Planning should be left to the experts,_ she thought.

"Well I wasn't exactly expecting Chris to call my bluff. He saw right through the story. He knew Alice would never leave quietly, especially without Claire."

"That's just great. You should have been more convincing." She scolded with a roll of her eyes. "Now what are we going to do? We obviously can't just leave them here. People will be getting up soon. We can't let them see."

"I have Alice tied up in a cave not far from here. Walking distance."

"So we take them there. Tie them up as well. Then what?" She was frustrated that Carlos had managed to screw up just as thoroughly as she had. Well, almost. As far as Kmart was concerned, she had only jumped the gun a little bit; Carlos had just fucked up his only job on a monumental scale.

"I don't like it, but we'll probably have to kill them." She admitted. It was a shame things hadn't worked out smoothly like they had planned. She would miss Claire an incredible amount, but it was what had to be done. She would never want to be with Kmart now that she knew everything.

"You're kidding." Carlos exclaimed, surprised at her decision.

"I'm not kidding." She sighed heavily. "Let's just get them to the cave. Then we'll see what happens. Maybe by the time we get there one of us will have come up with another brilliant plan to cover our sorry asses up."

Carlos looked at her uncertainly, but with a dismissive wave of her hand he reluctantly grabbed hold of Chris and hoisted him onto his shoulder. Grunting, he took hold of Claire's legs, letting his gun drop to its holster.

Kmart picked Claire up by the arms, and struggling, the two carried the unconscious bodies off in the direction of the cave.


	20. Chapter 20

**Well, this is it, the last chapter. I know there are some loose ends that people will have questions about, but i really just feel like this story is done. Maybe sometime in the future I'll do a sequel, but this is it for now. Thanks to all who commented and reviewed, it means so much! Enjoy...**

CHAPTER 20

Claire's head hurt. She grimaced as she tried to open her eyes, her forehead wrinkling just worsened the pain in her right temple.

Fighting through the throbbing ache, she opened her eyes, thinking that she had been sleeping in the SUV. As she took in her surroundings she knew that was false.

She was in the back of a small, dark cave. The light from the entrance wasn't far away at all, and cast stretched shadows of both Kmart and Carlos standing against the sunlight. They were whispering to each other in hushed tones. Claire couldn't make out anything they were saying, but they seemed oblivious to her bout of consciousness.

She looked to her left and spotted Chris, still sleeping. He was sitting up against the curved cave wall, his head slumped over to his shoulder and his breath came through his open mouth. He looked like he used to when he would fall asleep on the couch, arms straight at his sides though his hands were tied together, and legs outstretched in front of him.

Claire shifted her body and found that her own hands were bound tightly with thick rope and enforced with a layer of duct tape. Her legs and feet were free.

She scowled angrily to herself as she remembered what had happened; how Carlos and Kmart had betrayed her and knocked her out. She almost cried out in rage, but stopped herself as their private conversation rose slightly in volume, enough for Claire to finally hear. She quickly closed her eyes and faked sleep as she listened.

"I don't know how she got away," She heard Carlos growl through gritted teeth. "You know how she is. It's easy for her to break out of restraints that would undoubtedly hold anyone else."

"Then you shouldn't have expected to be able to hold her here!" Kmart snapped. "What made you think some loose rope and tape would keep her still?"

"You would have done the same thing if you had been in my position."

"No, I would have killed her. End of problem."

"That's easy for you to say in hindsight." Claire could almost hear Carlos rolling his eyes. "It's different when it's actually happening. Timing is everything. I had to act quickly."

"Yes, and in acting quickly you sacrificed stealth and accuracy. I can't believe this." Kmart's voice was slightly clearer, like she was facing Claire head on now. She could just picture the teenager turning away from Carlos with crossed arms.

"You of all people must know how important timing is in these situations," Carlos said. "Otherwise you wouldn't have screwed things up with Claire. You just couldn't wait, could you?"

A loud crack sounded and bounced off the walls of the cave. Claire squinted one of her eyes open the tiniest bit to see Carlos holding a hand to his cheek.

"Shut up. Yes, I screwed up. Yes, I tried to hasten things that should have been held out longer. But I intended to fix the problems I made. See? Chris and Claire, right there where I can watch them; stop them from doing anything to hurt us. But where's Alice, Carlos? Where's your mistake?"

"This isn't my fault." Carlos said stubbornly. "And not the issue at the moment either. The issue is getting her back; making sure no one else finds out about any of this."

"That's right," Kmart said in a low voice. "And damage control. We find Alice, bring her back here. Deal with the three of them. Then we come up with a story to tell the rest of the convoy to explain their absences."

"What do you mean 'deal' with them?" Carlos asked hesitantly.

"Ugh. Look, Carlos, just because you were friends with those women once doesn't mean we need to keep them around. The plan has obviously gone to shit, and there's no way to fix it other than ending their lives. They won't keep quiet any other way."

"I can't kill them." Carlos whispered. For a minute his tone reminded Claire of her old friend, the one who would have died to protect her at any given moment. Maybe Carlos wasn't all gone, she thought.

She opened her eyes, hoping to see the sincerity on his face. Maybe if she could just talk to him they could get out of here.

But when the blurriness faded from the edges of her vision, she not only saw Kmart and Carlos, staring each other down. She also saw the figure standing behind them, silhouetted black by the angle of the sun.

She knew by the sure stance and the outline of short cropped hair, the two sheathed knives strapped to the legs and the handle of a compact gun peeking over the back of the shoulder: it was Alice.

* * *

Alice didn't rush at Carlos and Kmart as she silently dropped from the overhanging mouth of the cave. Instead she stood still and quiet, listening to them talk in front of her. She wanted to know how the conversation would end; what Kmart would decide to do to "deal" with Claire and Chris.

But mostly she just wanted to wait until the perfect time to kick their asses.

As they argued, Alice saw Claire stir on the far side of the cave. Anger surged within her as she noticed the ropes binding Claire's hands together and a large purple bruise on her temple. Her feet wanted to move on their own, twitching in place. She wanted to go to Claire, but not just yet...

She saw Claire's eyes shut and her pulse quickened. Something had happened, she thought. Something bad.

With a grunt Alice propelled herself towards the back of the cave, stopping with both hands pressed against the back wall around Claire, and knelt to form a protective barrier. She moved her right hand to sweep gently across the redhead's cheek.

Claire's eyes snapped open in response to the touch. "Alice." Her relief was apparent in her tone.

"You're okay?" Alice asked, finally hearing someone's footsteps behind her.

"Duck..."

Alice scrunched her eyebrows together in confusion and then, realizing what Claire wanted, bent backwards at her knees until her head touched the ground behind her.

She saw Kmart above her.

She saw the gun pointed at her own chest.

And she saw Claire's face twisting into a terrifying mask of rage as she brought a leg back until the knee touched her chest, then struck forward, her boot catching Kmart square in the face.

The blonde staggered back, managing to keep her footing, and Alice moved.

In one fluid motion she twisted back up and around to face Kmart, once more at her full height. She reached for her kukri knives as she positioned herself protectively in front of Claire.

"I'm glad you decided to show up," Kmart said, blowing light hair out of her face. "It would have been a real bitch trying to find you."

"Well you won't have to worry about that anymore. Here I am." The knives squealed intimidatingly as they slid against the smooth leather sheaths, as if they were delighted to be of use.

"I do have one question," Kmart said. The two of them had begun stepping carefully, plotting in a large, slow circle. Their eyes never left each others'. "How did you do it? I'd been hinting to Claire for months; trying to get her to notice, and here you come along and in just a few days she's all over you. How does that happen?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "It helps to not be a fucking psychopath, for one thing."

Behind her she heard Claire snort.

"Maybe one day when you're older you'll learn. If your stupidity doesn't get you killed."

"I'm not the one whose going to get myself killed anytime soon." The teenagers' eyes darkened with a menacing danger. She fingered the trigger on the rifle she held.

"Do you _really_ want to do this?" Alice asked, raising an eyebrow.

Kmart sneered in response, bringing the butt of the gun up to rest on her shoulder. Her supporting arm shook in response to the weight of the weapon.

"What about you, Carlos?" Alice called over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off the young girl in front of her. "You've been awful quiet back there. You gonna try to bring me down, too?"

"Alice, Claire..." He began, his voice dripping with sincerity and sorrow. "I wish I could begin to explain to you how-"

"Yeah, okay." Alice cut him off, and didn't pause before she launched herself at Kmart, who had cocked the gun and started to aim. She was knocked to the floor by Alice's shoulder, but managed to hold on to the rifle.

"See, the thing about your gun is," Alice said, dancing away from Kmart as she swiped at Alice's feet. "That it's a _long range_ weapon."

The younger woman fired a shot haphazardly in Alice's direction, but the bullet went long and high, grazing the cave's ceiling as Claire thumped her in the side of the head with her fists, hands still clasped together.

Alice tossed one of the knives at the teenager. Not wanting to hit Claire accidentally, she aimed for Kmarts' leg, but she jumped to the side at the last second. The knife missed.

Kmart aimed at Alice again, firing another shot that almost hit, but instead grazed the blonde's arm, painting a thin line of red along her skin.

Alice cried out in pain and surprise. She gasped as she saw another bullet coming straight at her face, and flattened herself to the ground instantly. She sucked in a deep breath.

_This kid must have been watching Claire's fighting skills intensely,_she thought.

"Stay still so I can kill you!" She heard Kmart shout. She was obviously angry that Alice had just narrowly escaped a sure hit.

Alice jumped to her feet once again, and spotted Kmart's face pressed to the gun, the scope pointed directly at Alice's face.

There was a loud shout, a growl of rage, and both Alice and Kmart had a second to look around for the source of the noise before the teenager was flying through the air.

Alice saw her hit the wall of the cave and bounce off, her head smacking a rock as she landed. The rifle clattered to the ground and skidded to a stop at Claire's feet.

The redhead was panting, her face red from the effort and force with which she had to shove Kmart after jumping to her feet.

"What happened?" Chris asked from the back corner of the cave. _The loud fighting must have finally woken him up_, Alice thought.

She walked over to the unmoving teenager and gently placed two fingers over her pulse point. She closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh. The slowly growing pool of blood leaking from under her mass of blonde hair was enough to confirm any doubts Alice had about Kmart's condition.

"Tell me she's not..." Claire whispered, taking a tentative step towards the body.

Alice turned to look at her with a solemn expression. "I'm sorry."

"What _happened?_" Chris asked again, this time more demanding. Alice went over to help him. She cut his bindings with her remaining blade and pulled him to his feet.

"Kmart got a little trigger happy." Alice explained vaguely. "Claire stopped her."

"I didn't mean to," Claire said, staring down at the unmoving body. "I just wanted to get the gun away from her."

Alice looked around the cave. "Where's Carlos?"

"He must have taken off when the fighting started." Claire said.

"Wait a minute," Chris said, looking at Alice with the slightest hint of a grin. "You let a teenage girl almost best you in a fight? And I'd heard such great things about you."

"Shut up." She said, rolling her eyes, but she couldn't hide the smile that crept onto her face, nor the quiet laughter that started to bubble up from her throat.

Claire looked at her with wide eyes, then she too began to laugh. Soon all three of them were chuckling, and trying to stop made it worse.

"So what now?" Chris asked when the laughter had died out.

"We leave. We leave and we forget this happened." Claire said, deliberately not looking at Kmart's lifeless body.

They walked toward the cave's entrance, Chris in front, Alice and Claire behind him. Alice reached for Claire's hand, and the redhead entwined her fingers with Alice's.

Nobody retrieved Kmart's rifle.

* * *

The sun had set a few hours ago at the convoy's camp, and everyone had since gone to bed. Chris sat by the fire, taking first watch as he was too filled with adrenaline still from the earlier events.

Alice and Claire were in the SUV, taking off weapons and unnecessary accessories and shoes.

Claire sighed heavily and leaned her head on Alice's shoulder.

"Well, look at it this way," Alice said, wrapping the other girl up in her arms. "It's one less problem you'll have to deal with tomorrow. And you managed to get through today alright."

"I guess." She answered, turning in Alice's arms to face her. "I'm just sorry I didn't see it coming. Any of it. What kind of a leader am I if I can't even see obvious things like this?"

Alice brought her lips to Claire's, silencing the redhead before she could berate herself more.

"Stop," She said as she pulled away. "No one could have seen that shit coming. Kmart was a fruit loop, okay? None of that was your fault."

Claire sighed again. "I know, I know. I think I'll feel better tomorrow, though."

Alice crinkled her brow, confused. "Why? What's tomorrow?"

Claire grinned a mischievous grin as she looked at Alice.

"It's the day we move everyone to that shop and start machining some ammo."

"So soon?" Alice asked in disbelief.

"If not now, when? What is waiting going to do for us?"

Alice nodded. "See? You make a great leader."

Claire pressed her lips to Alice's again, and the blonde leaned into the kiss, lowering the two of them down onto the sheets. Alice's hands began riding up Claire's shirt, raising it above her stomach to her chest...

"Light!" Claire cried out, pointing to the overhead dome light of the SUV.

Alice silenced her again with her lips, and without breaking the kiss, reached around Claire to toss a shoe at the dash controls.

The last light in the convoy blinked out.


End file.
